Never forget the June 4, 1989 massacre in Beijing

Last week, I saw Mike Chinoy’s excellent new film, Assignment: China – Tiananmen Square. In it, the longtime CNN Beijing correspondent and current senior fellow at the University of Southern California US-China Institute tells the story of the 1989 Beijing protests and subsequent massacre through the eyes of the reporters that got the news out of China by whatever means necessary.

On the night of June 4, the rulers of China showed their true face to their own people, and, thanks to correspondents like Chinoy, to the world. Let us never forget the hundreds, if not thousands killed for the crime of wanting a better government.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is a blogger for Forbes and author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, high finance, and cheap lingerie. See his bio, online archive and more at www.muhammadcohen.com; follow him on Facebook and Twitter @MuhammadCohen.