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Li Peng in Australia in 2002. Reuters

As we commemorate this year the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre in China, which took place on the night of June 3-4, 1989, we have just learned of the death of the then Chinese Prime Minister. Li Peng, nicknamed "the butcher of Beijing" for his radical positions during the student demonstration has just died at the age of 90 years.

From our correspondent in Shanghai , Angélique Forget

For the Chinese official press, Li Peng is a " loyal communist warrior " and a " remarkable leader of the Party and the State ." For students in Tiananmen Square, he is one of the first to blame for the 30-year-old massacre that left thousands dead. On the evening of May 19, 1989, it was he who - after accepting a lively debate with students - announced the introduction of martial law.

Prime Minister from 1987 to 1998, in recent years he has appeared only rarely in public. But in 2010 his name is back on the front of the stage, when his supposed memories leak on the internet - he justifies including the repression of June 4.

In addition to this bloodshed, Li Peng leaves behind a controversy: the construction of the world's largest Three Gorges Dam project that he has always defended, which required the displacement of more than 1.5 million people and that presents environmental risks.