Previously classified diplomatic cable reveals what PM Bob Hawke thought he knew about the Tiananmen massacre

A previously classified diplomatic cable obtained by the ABC was the trigger for then-prime minister Bob Hawke revealing heart-rending details of what Australian diplomats thought had happened during the Tiananmen Square massacre. 

On June 9, 1989, Mr Hawke gave one of the most memorable speeches of his career.

Key points:

It was at a memorial service held for victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, which had occurred five days earlier.

While journalists and foreign governments scrambled to find out what had happened in Beijing, Mr Hawke gave a graphic description of details that had not be reported anywhere in the world.

He described Chinese soldiers rushing into Tiananmen Square, firing their guns indiscriminately, running over civilians with tanks, squashing bodies into “pulp”, and incinerating the remains with flamethrowers.

It brought the prime minister to tears at one point and the moment shaped the perception of the event for many Australians who heard his speech.

He also made the extraordinary pledge to offer Chinese students in Australia the opportunity to stay here to avoid any persecution, a promise that led to the granting of 42,000 permanent visas.

The ABC’s China, If You’re Listening podcast can now reveal for the first time the source of those details, and that the information he was reading was false.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 1 minute 52 seconds1m 52s Bob Hawke cries while reading from a diplomatic telegram about the massacre. The two documents Bob Hawke read from

When Mr Hawke approached the podium at a special memorial service for the victims at Tiananmen square, held in the Great Hall at Parliament House, he carried two documents.

The first was his prepared remarks, in which he praised the bravery of the student protesters, described the event based on media reports and called for the Chinese government to cease the attack on their own people.

The Tiananmen protests started with a few student demonstrators in mid-April 1989 but swelled until being violently suppressed in June of that year.(

AFP: Catherine Henriette

)

In the space between the sixth and seventh paragraphs of the speech, Hawke had drawn an asterisk. He intended at that point to depart from his prepared remarks, and divert to his second document.

Hawke reached this point, paused briefly and put his speech aside.

“Let me read an extract from a report to us,” he said.

Diplomatic cable contained harrowing details

On June 7, a confidential diplomatic cable had been transmitted from the Australian embassy in Beijing, describing the latest intelligence on what had happened on the day the army moved in on student protestors who had occupied Tiananmen Square.

Podcast China, If You’re Listening The man of destiny

Subscribe to Matt Bevan’s ABC News podcast about China and how our relationship with it is changing.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.

“As the events of the night of 3 June in Beijing become clearer, it is evident that atrocities have been committed on a massive scale,” the four-page document began.

This is the second document Bob Hawke carried with him, and it was obtained by the ABC from the National Archives of Australia.

He read nearly verbatim from pages 2 and 3 of the document.

“At Tiananmen, the troops who’d first arrived attempted to drive the people away, to separate the students from the ordinary citizens. A last warning was given, and the students prepared to leave,” he said.

“They had expected to be given an hour but within five minutes the anti-personnel carriers of the 27th entered the square, firing their machine guns as they came.

“When all those who had not managed to get away were either dead or wounded, foot soldiers went through the square bayoneting or shooting anybody who was still alive.

Then-prime minister Bob Hawke described how the Chinese army were ordered to kill indiscriminately.(

AFP: Manuel Ceneta

)

“They had orders that nobody in the square be spared, and children and young girls were slaughtered, anti-personnel carriers and tanks then ran backwards and forwards over the bodies of the slain until they were reduced to pulp, after which, bulldozers moved in to push the remains into piles which were then incinerated by troops with flamethrowers.”

At that point, his voice cracking and with tears in his eyes, he returned to his prepared remarks.

Embassy didn’t expect details of the cable to be read out

In the Beijing embassy, word reached the diplomatic staff that their cable had been read, verbatim, on television, by the prime minister.

That included professor Richard Rigby, who at the time worked as political counselor at the embassy and is now at the China Institute of Australian National University.

“That was a surprise [and] I’m speaking diplomatically,” he said.

He drafted the cable that had been read on television by the prime minister.

Mr Hawke was much more explicit in his description of events at Tiananmen in the immediate aftermath than many contemporary world leaders, including George H.W. Bush.(

National Archives of Australia

)

At the top of the cable, there had been a disclaimer of sorts.

“There can be little doubt that the overall picture is correct, even if certain details may eventually prove to be inaccurate,” he had written.

It quickly emerged that many of the details, which had been read out by Mr Hawke were incorrect.

“Within a few days, certainly within a week, it was clear that the information about what happened in the square itself was incorrect,” Professor Rigby said.

“By and large, all the descriptions in the cable of the things which were happening outside the square as the military moved towards the square were pretty accurate even in hindsight.”

The consensus among most experts is that between several hundred and several thousand Chinese civilians were killed on the streets of Beijing, but there is doubt about what precisely happened inside the square and whether that was the scene of most of the killing. It was the description of that specific scene that Professor Rigby said was retracted.

He said Hou Dejian, a student activist who took refuge in the Australian embassy following the massacre, gave him and embassy staff a clearer picture of what had happened.

“We had first-hand information from somebody who had been in the square, negotiating with the military.”

A number of cables were transmitted from the embassy in the following days and weeks, retracting details of the original cable.

Where had the information in the first cable come from?

While the Australian cable Bob Hawke was reading from has never before been made public, a cable sent at the same time to London and Hong Kong from British ambassador Sir Alan Donald was declassified in 2017.

The British cable and Australian cable are strikingly similar.

They present similar information about the massacre in similar order.

Loading

Both cables said the bulk of their information came from an informant with contacts at the upper levels of the Chinese government.

It is likely the informant relied upon by both embassies was the same person, according to Professor Rigby.

“I’m pretty sure that he was also speaking to equivalent senior people in the British embassy at the time, which would largely account for the similarity of some of the details.”

Mr Hawke had worked hard to improve relations with China, including hosting Premier Li Peng in 1988 in Western Australia.(

Getty: Patrick Riviere

)

But he said the informant, who both embassies considered to be reliable, was the source of some of the inaccurate information.

“I think that he thought that he was telling the truth. But, it was the sort of stuff that a lot of other people that we were talking to in the immediate aftermath were saying.

“I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that we were being fed some sort of a ‘line’.

“The whole incident occurred because there was this life and death power struggle going on at the highest levels of the Chinese government.

“[The informant] would, of course, be reflecting the views, and the hopes and the fears of one particular group; the group that lost out.

“So there would be a vested interest in conveying as bad a picture as possible, of what the people on the other side of this power struggle were doing and were responsible for.”

The search for the truth of what happened inside Tiananmen Square

Reading out raw intelligence from diplomatic cables in nationally televised speeches is not a common practice among Australian prime ministers.

“When one writes those sorts of messages, classified, from an embassy, you don’t expect them within a few days’ time to be read out in public,” Professor Rigby said.

Several people who were close to Bob Hawke at the time said he was so moved by the contents of the cable that he decided to read it out, including his biographer and wife Blanche d’Alpuget.

“He was devastated for two reasons. One was the horrendous, horrendous reported loss of life, and the other was that he saw it would be a disaster for China,” she told China, If You’re Listening.

Blanche d’Alpuget said Mr Hawke never voiced any regret about making his emotional speech, even if some of the details turned out to be inaccurate.(

ABC News: Jerry Rickard

)

“The work that Bob did with the Chinese leadership was of enormous importance to him personally, but also because he saw what it was going to do for Australia.”

But she said that later, after being presented with new information about the event, he came to a realisation that some of the details were incorrect. Although, he did not voice any regrets.

“The point about that was, when he wept, the sight of him crying for them had a great emotional effect on the Australian Chinese community, and many Chinese in China.

“For them, it was a very extraordinary experience, to see a white man crying for them.”

Discussion of Tiananmen Square has been banned from Chinese media, censored on the internet and knowledge of the event is only passed on through word of mouth.

“The sad thing is the Chinese government has never told the truth about what happened in Tiananmen, so all we have is speculation,” said Ms d’Alpuget

While the western world still struggles to determine what exactly happened on June 4th 1989, the effective censorship of discussion in China may mean the truth is never known.