this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
87 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43939 readers
531 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"Here are photos that show things other than soldiers shooting civilians proving that soldiers didn't shoot civilians!" isn't as convincing as you might think it is. And wow, that article doesn't even pretend to not be straight up propaganda.
No one, myself included, said that soldiers didn't shoot civilians. Soldiers did shoot civilians. The purpose of the photos is to establish that there was killing of soldiers prior to that point that was evidence of a (likely small) group of very aggressive militants among a faction of the protestors, ones who seemed to be intent on instigating violence. The event was much more complicated than soldiers firing into a crowd in cold blood, and as internal reporting that I linked above mentioned, many people repudiated the image painted in westerners' minds of soldiers wantonly firing into a crowd of huddled protestors. Their aim plainly was not to kill the peaceful protestors but to capture or kill militants who demonstrated a willingness to kill in cold blood. The civilians who were killed were caught up in that crossfire.
The photos are helpful, but beyond that I think the strongest source are those reports from the US embassy and LA diplomat and the interviews with the student leaders themselves. I would encourage you to look at those.
Let's assume you are right that soldiers never purposefully shot civilians as their main goal. Unless you are claiming that these "militants" were fighting with their own guns, I don't see how firing blindly into groups of protestors with firearms is that much better?
But I don't believe that violence against the protestors was never part of the plan. Just like in the US I would never put it past the government to use violence, "accidental" or otherwise, as part of a scenario to suppress a large-scale protest movement.
The militants among the protestors did have petrol bombs and they took guns from at least one flamed-out APC, and the soldiers didn't know what else they had. Beyond that, the soldiers still weren't firing blindly into groups of protestors, read the links I posted, even just the brief report from the Latin American diplomat.