Source: China News Network
The 28-year-old and the 31-year-old are a newlywed couple, young and promising; 48-year-old, she is the mainstay of the workplace, the mother of the child, the hostess of the harmonious family.
They are ordinary people like you and me in life, and they are also brave "retrogrades" in a big era. These three living lives are forever frozen in the sad spring of Belgrade 23 years ago.
Today, please join us in deeply remembering the three heroic martyrs of China. They were war correspondents Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu and Zhu Ying.
Data chart: Three Chinese martyrs killed in the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Zhu Ying (from left).
Near midnight on May 7, 1999 (early morning Beijing time on the 8th), a scene that shocked the world occurred.
An American B-2 stealth bomber, lifted off from Terman Air Base in Missouri, flew to Belgrade, the capital of the distant Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and dropped five precision-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) at the Chinese Embassy from multiple angles.
Without any warning, everything came suddenly.
In a blinding white light, the loud sound of the explosion was heard, the roof collapsed, the fire soared into the sky, and concrete blocks, steel bars, and glass slag flew down in front of their eyes and smashed into people.
What was originally the safest place became a purgatory on earth.
Many were wounded, and they groped for where their companions were, holding hands and pushing them out. Some people tied curtains and sheets into escape ropes to climb downstairs, some people's hands were scalded with hot steel bars, and some people were choked by thick smoke and almost suffocated.
Out of the rubble, no one wanted to leave, and everyone stayed behind to count the number of people and rescue their comrades. Soon, they found that four people were missing.
Three of them were Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Zhu Ying, who had sacrificed. The fourth person was Ren Baokai, the military attaché of the embassy who was later found and survived.
Cao Rongfei, the first secretary of the embassy, was lifted out with a bloodied face, and his eyes were blinded by explosive debris and impurities.
On April 4, 2021 local time, the Embassy in Serbia held a commemorative event at the former site of our Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to commemorate the three martyrs who died in the NATO bombing in 1999. Image source: Website of the Chinese Embassy in Cyprus
At that time, everyone had to decide to hide one thing from Cao Rongfei, that is, the news of Shao Yunhuan's death. Because she is Cao Rongfei's wife.
As an excellent war correspondent, Shao Yunhuan has rubbed shoulders with the god of death countless times in his many years of career. Whether it is war-torn Croatia and Slovenia, or Macedonia and Montenegro, which became independent after the division of Yugoslavia, she has reported interviews.
Shao Yunhuan was deeply touched by the cruelty of the war, and she waved her pen like a rainbow, buried her head in work all day, and often did not rest at two or three o'clock in the morning.
"Nothing, no big deal for a life"! When he took the initiative to go to Yugoslavia, which was full of crises, Shao Yunhuan made a bold statement.
I never thought that this time, it would be a trick.
On April 4, 2022, local time, flowers surrounded the monument to the former site of the Chinese Embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Image source: Website of the Chinese Embassy in Cyprus
The parents of the Zhu family have lost their daughter Zhu Ying and son-in-law Xu Xinghu. They shouted, "Yingying (Zhu Ying), Tiger Zi, can you hear me?"
Xu Xinghu's unfinished "Battlefield Diary", like zhu Yinglu's voice prompts on his landline at home, has become the last trace left to the world.
In "Diary of the Battlefield - Witnessing the Artillery Fire", just two days after his death, Xu Xinghu wrote down the words of Aiden White, secretary general of the International Federation of Journalists: "Every NATO bombing of journalists and news dissemination facilities is a violation of democracy" and "journalists and media around the world have the responsibility to truthfully report the serious consequences of NATO's bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
Zhu Ying's parents wrote: "Our daughter Yingying, who has been raising herself for 27 years, has left us forever. We cannot accept this harsh truth."
"Yingying, on your way to Belgrade, you said that you would be a messenger of peace, but the United States, NATO, and those 'saviors' who are morally upright have cruelly taken the lives of peace messengers."
"We will never, never, never forget this blood debt.".
Cover of Time magazine in 1999: "Bring Serbs to their knees, massive bombing opens the door to peace"
The blood debt owed by NATO Chinese never forget.
23 years ago, Chinese shouted dumb, cried red eyes, dried up tears, and issued the strongest condemnation for the slaughter of his compatriots by NATO.
After 23 years, everything is still fresh in our minds. The Chinese side has repeatedly stated that NATO still owes a blood debt to the people of the Chinese, and the people of the Chinese will never forget this barbaric atrocity of NATO, nor will they allow the historical tragedy to repeat itself.
The blood debt owed by NATO will never be forgotten by Serbia.
Twenty-three years ago, the US-led NATO army bombed indiscriminately for 78 days, turning the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into a scorched earth. More than 8,000 innocent civilian casualties, nearly 1 million people have been reduced to refugees, and the dropping of 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs has caused endless harm.
23 years later, Serbian President Vucic noted at a memorial service that NATO launched a "brutal, horrific and unforgivable attack" on an innocent small country that has never violated any country and that "we will never forget." ”
The blood debt owed by NATO will never be forgotten by the people of the world.
For more than 30 years, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO, a product of the Cold War, did not wither away, but instead expanded eastward five rounds, increased its troops to Europe, and constantly provoked geopolitical confrontation, becoming the culprit in the outbreak of conflicts between Russia and Ukraine today.
In the past 30 years, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria... NATO's wars of conquest, launching and deeply involved have caused irreversible and serious damage to many countries, and the impact has spread to generations, and the crimes have long been innumerable.
In Shao Yunhuan's posthumous work, Tragic Belgrade, she wrote: "The ill-fated Yugoslav people still have to pay the price of blood and lives to defend their fundamental freedoms." And in the end, she used her life to write the history of blood and fire.
The heroes and martyrs have returned to their hometowns, but later people must not forget all this. Because of this humiliating and painful past, it is engraved in the bones of every Chinese. (Reporter Meng Xiangjun)
(Source: China News Network)