by Ben Whedon
Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz once claimed he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China, though local news outlets showed he was in Nebraska at the time.
1989’s demonstrations saw protesters gather in Tiananmen Square from April 15-June 4 of that year demanding democratic reforms to the Chinese communist system. The demonstrations ended when the government dispatched troops to clear the square.
Walz, in 2014, claimed to have been in Hong Kong in May of 1989 at a congressional hearing, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
“I was just going to teach high school in Foshan in Guangdong, and was in Hong Kong in May of ‘89,” he said. “And as the events were unfolding, several of us went in. And I still remember the train station in Hong Kong.”
“There was a large number of, especially European, I think, very angry that we would still go after what had happened, but it was my belief at that time that the diplomacy was going to happen on many levels,” he continued.
But local news reports show that Walz was in Nebraska in May and June and that he did not leave for China until August, months after the conclusion of the demonstrations.
A May 1989 article in the Alliance Times-Herald, for instance, shows Walz touring the local National Guard storeroom. An April article in the Chadron Record, meanwhile, states that Walz would leave for China in August.
Local MPR News noted Monday that “[t]he campaign was unable to produce documentation to back up Walz’s statement that he was there during the uprising.”
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Ben Whedon is a reporter for Just the News.
Background Photo “Tiananmen Square” by Paul Burns. CC BY-SA 4.0.
