Former Chinese premier Li Peng, known for brutal breakup of Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, dies aged 91
Li earned the nickname"Butcher of Beijing" for orchestrating the brutal breakup of mass demonstrations in the capital in 1989. He died of an unspecified illness after failing to respond to medical treatment, official Xinhua news agency says.
He stayed at the top of the Communist regime for more than a decade, while remaining a hated symbol of the repression until his death. Though the decision to send in the troops was a collective one, Li was widely held responsible for the bloody crackdown. He held the premiership for 11 years until 1998 and was chairman of China's Communist-controlled parliament until 2003.Li spent his childhood in the shadow of Zhou Enlai, China's premier for nearly three decades and possibly the Communist Party's most skilled politician.
After returning to China, his high-level family contacts allowed him to escape the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution , and to rise quickly through the Energy Ministry, before becoming premier himself in 1987. "Without these measures, China would have faced a situation worse than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe," he said on a tour of Austria in 1994 as his international pariah status started to wear off.Two days before the declaration of martial law, Li met with student leaders, who cut him off and rebuked him for not addressing their demands in a surreal scene broadcast live on TV.
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