Whatever happened to the guy who stood in front of the tank in Tiannemen Square in 1989?

elburcher

Robin Munro The first article claiming to identify him appeared in the Sunday Express giving him the name Wang Wei Lin. Later, the London Evening Standard said that it had hard evidence that he'd been executed. You were very skeptical of these reports. Why? … I followed the paper trail of the reports that appeared in the Western press, naming him as Wang Wei Lin, the reports that he'd been executed. … So I talked to one of the journalists from Britain who had published that story naming him and saying he had been executed. … And by the end of the interview, I had a very clear sense that actually this man's sources were not reliable. … I just concluded at the end of that investigation that we actually had no idea of … what his real name was, and we had even less idea of what had happened to him. He'd simply disappeared. … He may have been executed, but those reports were not based on information that I thought stood up to examination. So we were left with just a huge question mark over that man. … But we know what he stood for. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ Every time I watch the video of this, I am still captivated and awed by the courage the man displayed!! Absolutely Incredible ! Jun 28 06, 6:37 PM

zbeckabee

There are several conflicting stories about what happened to him after the demonstration. In a speech to the President's Club in 1999, Bruce Herschensohn — former deputy special assistant to President of the United States Richard Nixon — reported that he was executed 14 days later; other sources say he was killed by firing squad a few months after the Tiananmen Square protests. In Red China Blues: My Long March from Mao to Now, Jan Wong writes that the man is still alive and in hiding in mainland China. An eyewitness account of the event published in October 2005 by Charlie Cole, a contract photographer for Newsweek magazine at the time, states that the man was arrested on the spot by the Public Security Bureau. The People's Republic of China government made few statements about the incident or the person involved. In a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters, then-Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin was asked what became of the man. Jiang replied "I think never killed [sic]." A recent article in the Hong Kong Apple Daily states that Wang is now residing in Taiwan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Weilin Jun 29 06, 8:29 AM