Despair and Death In a Beijing Square

It was only a matter of time. For seven weeks the world had marveled at the restraint demonstrated by both Beijing's rulers and the thousands of demonstrators for democracy who had occupied Tiananmen Square. The whole affair, in fact, had developed the aura of a surrealistic ritual, with both sides' forces stepping in circles as if they were performing some stately, stylized pavane. Violence, it seemed, was out of the question. And then, early Sunday morning, the dance ended in a spasm of fury, the worst day of bloodshed in Communist China's history.

Until week's end it appeared that the army would continue to hold back. On Friday unarmed soldiers in shirtsleeves made a desultory pass at dispersing the crowds but quickly turned back. By Saturday afternoon, however, the mood changed. At 2 p.m. troops popped tear-gas shells and beat up people trying to stop them from moving into the center of Beijing. An hour later, behind the Great Hall of the People, helmeted soldiers began lashing out at students, bystanders and other citizens who, as if summoned by some irresistible call to the barricades, rushed to the district by the thousands. Soldiers stripped off their belts and used them to whip people; others beat anyone in their path with truncheons, bloodying heads as they tried to pry an opening through the mob. For 5 1/2 hours the students held fast. Then the army inexplicably vanished. Within an hour, off Qianmen West Road on the southern end of the square, 1,200 more troops appeared. Once again they were surrounded by civilians; the soldiers again retreated.

But those forays were only the prelude to death. At 2 a.m. Sunday a convoy of 50 trucks with foot soldiers barreled along the crowded streets that empty into the square. Advance troops torched buses and trucks that had been set up as barricades, enabling the convoy to pass through. Suddenly soldiers of the People's Liberation Army seemed to be everywhere: pouring out of the ancient Forbidden City, poised on the rooftops of the Great Hall of the People and Mao ) Zedong's mausoleum, entering the vast, 100-acre square from side streets in a triple-fanged movement from the south, west and east. Ten thousand strong, the army mounted a deliberately vicious assault.

Leveling their AK-47 assault rifles, the soldiers began firing away at the mobs. The gas tanks of commandeered buses exploded. Huge streams of people fled in terror past blazing trees along Changan Avenue -- the Avenue of Eternal Peace. As helmeted soldiers mounted automatic machine guns on tripods facing the square, policemen with truncheons chased people from the sidewalks and the ornate marble bridges leading to the Forbidden City.

The shooting grew most intense by 2:15 a.m. A Belgian tourist said he saw a hundred soldiers line up in front of the Museum of the Revolution and fire into the crowd. Panic-stricken people fell to the pavement or cowered behind the imperial city's ornate stone lions. Many sought sanctuary at the Beijing Hotel complex, where military officers later combed through rooms searching for foreign journalists' notebooks and audio-and videotapes.