Today is the 20th anniversary of the several-day assault by hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops on the people of Beijing. The assault began on June 3, 1989 with troops invading the city from all directions and culminated in the defiance of one man who held up a line of Chinese Type-59 tanks on the morning of June 5th. To this day, he is simply known as The Tank Man. His name is not known. At the moment, he represented the cumulative anger, frustration, and hopelessness of the remaining protesters and the families and friends of thousands that had been slaughtered or seriously injured. It was a courageous act of a lone person that has reverberated throughout the world. The Tiananmen Square massacre (referred to in Chinese as the June 4 Incident) is a carefully guarded secret in China, which is difficult to explain away as merely an accidental stumble down the steps or walking into a door.
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