A leading Hong Kong lawmaker yesterday tried to calm an uproar sparked by his comments that China's bloody crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests was not a massacre.
Pro-Beijing legislator Ma Lik's (馬力) denial of the June 4 massacre made the front pages of most major newspapers in Hong Kong, which also printed file photos of mangled dead bodies in Beijing's streets after the military assault that killed hundreds, possibly thousands.
Ma told Hong Kong reporters on Tuesday that gweilo, local slang for "foreigners," shouldn't be allowed to decide what really happened at Tiananmen Square, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported. He said the government should provide the authoritative account of the crackdown, the newspaper reported.
"We should not say the Communist Party massacred people on June 4. I never said that nobody was killed, but it was not a massacre," the newspaper quoted Ma as saying.
"A massacre would mean the Communist Party intentionally killed people with machine guns indiscriminately," Ma was quoted as saying.
Ma also said he doubted accounts of tanks running over bodies and grinding up corpses like meat, the Post and Ming Pao Daily News reported.
His remarks drew criticism from several legislators, democracy activists and dissidents.
Wang Dan (王丹), one of the students who led the Tiananmen protest, told The Associated Press in an e-mail that Ma was "utterly devoid of a conscience." He took particular offense at Ma's skepticism over the bodies crushed by tanks.
"There are photos that prove this. They've been published in many books. Hong Kong can easily see them. If Ma Lik doesn't believe them, then he can lay down under a tank. If he's not turned into ground up meat, then I will apologize," Wang said.
Ma toned down his remarks yesterday morning during an interview with government-run RTHK radio.
"What I meant is to look at the incident rationally. It happened a long time ago. I was not insulting those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square to fight for democracy," he said.
But he added, "The description of the June 4 incident as a massacre and a river of blood, I think all these are not complete and correct views."
Beijing has rejected calls by dissidents and others to revisit the Tiananmen issue. The Communist government has officially classified the seven-week demonstrations as a counterrevolutionary riot.
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