The world was watching when footage of the "tank man"-the lone Chinese citizen blocking the passage of a column of tanks during the brutal 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square-first appeared in the media. The furtive video is now regarded as an iconic depiction of a government's violence against its own people. Throughout the twentieth century, states across East Asia committed many relatively undocumented atrocities, with victims numbering in the millions. The contributors to this insightful volume analyze many of the most notorious cases, including the Japanese army's...
The world was watching when footage of the "tank man"-the lone Chinese citizen blocking the passage of a column of tanks during the brutal 1989 crackd...