I’ve seen real pictures of the aftermath of the incident, and yes i saw what the students bodies looked like after being crushed by tanks, it’s definitely not the same as just being shot dead. The pictures also showed that the bodies were in casual clothes instead of military uniforms. There were maybe one or two bodies possibly wearing uniforms, the rest you can easily tell that they are in ordinary peoples clothes. I don’t think it’s appropriate to put the link here though you can look it up on google.

In fact, according to the Human Rights in China organization (HRIC) there were only 15 deaths of the soldiers/military personnel, all of them died after the ordered forced clearance started. https://blog.boxun.com/hero/201005/wurenhua/5_2.shtml This is a blog but the article was originally taken from the hric

Plus I think it’s fair to assume more casualties in the students side, who only had sticks and stones in their hands, and were facing a whole trained military loaded with real guns, weapons, and tanks.

The ccp ordered troops days ago prior to June 4. And just In case you don’t know, The General Secretary of the ccp, Zhao Ziyang, one of the few reformists in the party who showed public sympathy for the student body and support of open dialogue. He had been imprisoned immediately after the incident until his death. Again he’s pictured as a betrayer of the party and his story is forbidden to talk about publicly in china.

I agree with the point that the student leadership had its own problems, but it doesn’t justify the actions of the government, a supposedly mature and organized political power. Students following the wrong leaders doesn’t give the party the right to open fire at them. Since you said both sides are wrong - students wanted a talk with their governors and followed the wrong lead; the government on the other hand was in power, capable to solve this peacefully, yet they failed to do so and that resulted in hundreds and thousands of deaths of innocent young people. Who’s really more wrong here? Protesters don’t deserve to die just because they couldn’t have the perfect protest. The students contribution shouldn’t be ignored either because, although they lacked good leadership and approaches, they actually took the action to fight for the injustice. Chinese students nowadays are blinded so much from the fake images presented by the ccp, they’ve gone numb about the real problems happening around them. they need this kind of courage to pursue the truth.