Former Chinese premier Li Peng -- known as the \"Butcher of Beijing\" for his role in the T"},"modified":"2019-07-23T17:00:52","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T17:00:52","slug":"former-chinese-premier-li-peng-dies-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/07\/23\/former-chinese-premier-li-peng-dies-at-90\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Chinese premier Li Peng dies at 90 |"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former Chinese premier Li Peng — known as the “Butcher of Beijing” for his role in the Tiananmen Square crackdown — has died aged 90, state broadcaster Xinhua said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The former chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee died of an unspecified illness in Beijing on Monday, Xinhua said.<\/p>\n
The ex-premier had previously battled bladder cancer.<\/p>\n
Li gained notoriety worldwide as one of the key architects of the brutal breakup of mass pro-democracy demonstrations in the capital on June 4, 1989, and stayed at the top of the Communist regime for more than a decade, while remaining a hated symbol of the repression until his death.<\/p>\n
After vast crowds of students, workers and others had been encamped for weeks in Tiananmen Square to demand change, Li proclaimed martial law on May 20, 1989.<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, on the night of June 3-4, the military put a bloody end to the protests, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians — by some estimates more than 1,000.<\/p>\n
Though the decision to send in the troops was a collective one, Li was widely held responsible for the bloody crackdown.<\/p>\n
Li afterwards frequently defending the decision to fire on the demonstrators as a “necessary” step.<\/p>\n
“Without these measures, China would have faced a situation worse than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe,” he said on a tour of Austria in 1994 as his international pariah status started to wear off.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n
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