While writing the script for this short video below I made commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Peking (Tiananmen) Massacre I was frustrated by a detail that I came across, which I’ll document here.
(Video with full English subtitles)
The matter is, during the months seeing the largest pro-freedom protests since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime’s establishment that lead up to the Peking Massacre in June 1989, did top rulers within the CCP regime approached the Swiss ambassador in Peking asking him about transferring large sums of money to banks in Switzerland?
Canadian journalist Tom Korski was the first to report on this detail in 2015. Mr Korski cited confidential messages from Canadian diplomats in Peking back to Ottawa in 1989, declassified recently by Library & Archives Canada under the Access to Information Act. One message read: “The Swiss Ambassador, himself an ‘Old China Hand’, told us that over the past few months every member of the Politburo Standing Committee has approached him about transferring very significant amounts of money to Swiss bank accounts. For obvious reasons, he has urged us to guard this information with the utmost care”.
Gruesome details of the 1989 Peking Massacre were also revealed in the same collection of Canadian cables:
- An old woman knelt in front of soldiers pleading for students; soldiers killed her.
- A boy was seen trying to escape holding a woman with a 2-year old child in a stroller, and was run over by a tank. The tank turned around and mashed them up.
The true face of the CCP, which horrified humanity in 1989 but is today buried under layers of cosmetics and photoshopped, was also kept in fading snapshots such as the Sir Alan Ewen Donald cables of 1989, released by The National Archives of Britain in 2017. The late Sir Donald, then British ambassador to Peking, included these grisly details in his secret cables to London in June 1989:
- Students linked arms but were mown down, including soldiers.
- APCs (Armed Personnel Carriers) then ran over bodies time and time again to make quote pie unquote, and remains collected by bulldozer.
- Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains.
- 27 army ordered to spare no one and shot wounded SMR (Shen-yang Military Region) soldiers.
- 4 wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted.
- A 3 year old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others who tried.
- 1000 survivors were told they could escape via Zheng-yi-lu but were then mown down by specially prepared M/G (Machine Gun) positions.
- Army ambulances who attempted to give aid were shot up, as was a Sino-Japanese Hospital ambulance. (Note: Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital being a hospital in Peking funded by Japan back in the 1980s when the “People Republic of China – PRC” was in its honeymoon with Japan.)
- With medical crew dead, wounded driver attempted to ram attackers, but was blown to pieces by anti-tank weapon.
- In further attack APCs caught up with SMR straggler trucks, rammed and overturned them, and ran over troops.
- During attack 27 army officer shot dead by own troops, apparently because he faltered.
- Troops explained they would be shot if they hadn't shot officer.
- 27 army were using dum-dum bullets.
- 27 army snipers shot many civilians on balconies, streetsweepers etc. for target practice.
- Minimum estimate of civilian dead 10,000.
When the Sir Alan Ewen Donald cables were declassified in October 2017, they were widely reported. Agence France-Presse (AFP) independently verified these documents at The National Archives in Kew in Richmond shortly after the initial reporting on a Chinese language website. Other reports included those from the The Times, the BBC, The Independent and the RFA.
In comparison, the Canadian cables released in 2015 were largely overlooked by the media. After Mr Korski’s initial report, only the Daily Telegraph and the RFA followed the story, and the reason of other media’s lack of enthusiasm, might have to do with an article that appeared on the ‘Sinosphere blogs’ on the New York Times’ website three days after Korski’s report. The ‘Sinosphere blogs’ article was penned by Austin Ramzy. It claimed “the Swiss ambassador to China from April 1988 to April 1995, said that stringent political controls meant that he and other foreign envoys never had such access to high-level figures before or during the 1989 crisis. In an email interview he wrote that the assertion that he was approached to discuss transferring funds abroad ‘sounds absurd.’”
A powerful exoneration for the “innocent” CCP rulers, straight from the horse’s mouth – except that it might not be. To any honest observer of the CCP regime, this denial after twenty six years sounded almost as dubious as any utterance made by the CCP itself. Driven by curiosity I made the simplest research by entering Ambassador Erwin Schurtenberger’s name to Google, and here is what Google told me. Since his previous life as a diplomat for Switzerland, Ambassador Schurtenberger had been:
- Honorary Member of the Swiss Chinese Chamber of Commerce
- Independent director on the board of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation – CNOOC Group
- Independent Business Advisor to Credit Suisse Financial Services
- Independent Business Advisor to Novartis and Bunge
- Senior Advisor of the China Training Center for Senior Personnel Management Officials
Weighing the two contradicting statements, one sent by Canadian diplomats discreetly back to Ottawa from Peking during that fateful summer of 1989, the other made in a ‘Sinosphere blogs’ article twenty six years later, by the former ambassador who could no longer disentangle himself from the money web weaved by the CCP within democracies all over the world in the past three decades, I chose to believe the former over the latter, and cited it in my video above.
lmlmlmlm666
June – July 2019
https://www.youtube.com/user/lmlmlmlm666
(All the information sources mentioned hitherto are listed below as appendix.)
Appendix
Media reports related to the Sir Alan Ewen Donald cables of 1989, released by The National Archives of Britain in 2017
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/secret-british-cable-put-tiananmen-death-toll-at-10-000-mxjxggrqt
Secret British cable put Tiananmen death toll at 10,000
David Rankin
December 23 2017
https://www.dw.com/en/secret-cable-10000-killed-in-chinas-1989-tiananmen-crackdown/a-41918713
Secret cable: 10,000 killed in China's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown
Shamil Shams (with Agence France Presse AFP)
Date 23.12.2017
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42465516
Tiananmen Square protest death toll 'was 10,000'
December 23 2017
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tiananmen-square-massacre-death-toll-secret-cable-british-ambassador-1989-alan-donald-a8126461.html
At least 10,000 people died in Tiananmen Square massacre, secret British cable from the time alleged
Adam Lusher
Saturday 23 December 2017
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/tianmen-revelations-12212017131357.html
Chinese Army 'Spared No-one' in 1989 Mass Killings in Beijing: UK cables
Reported by Lin Ping for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
2017-12-21
Media reports related to the Canadian diplomatic cables from Peking to Ottawa in 1989, released by Library & Archives Canada in 2015
https://www.blacklocks.ca/embassy-feared-1989-chinese-raid-say-confidential-memos/
Embassy Feared 1989 Chinese Raid Say Confidential Memos
Blacklock's Reporter – Minding Ottawa's Business
Tom Korski
Monday, January 26, 2015
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11372052/Fresh-details-of-savage-Tiananmen-massacre-emerge-in-embassy-cables.html
Fresh details of 'savage' Tiananmen massacre emerge in embassy cables
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
1:54PM GMT 27 Jan 2015
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/secrets-01292015144655.html
Victim's Mother Hits Out at Foreign Governments Over Tiananmen Secrets
Reported by Hai Nan for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Xin Lin for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
2015-01-29
https://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/canadian-diplomatic-cables-from-1989-offer-new-detail-and-questions-on-tiananmen/
1989 Cables Offer New Detail, and Questions, on Tiananmen
BY AUSTIN RAMZY
JANUARY 29, 2015
Former Swiss ambassador’s life in the commercial world
https://www.sccc.ch/chapters/zurich-headquarter/leadership
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/03/business/worldbusiness/chinese-company-drops-bid-to-buy-us-oil-concern.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=3671087&privcapId=278275935
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