Something smells off. Especially these sentences: “ I never ceased to be awed by the courage of ordinary citizens risking dangerous rescues that immediately followed the massacre. Press reports had claimed hundreds or thousands of people had died during the military crackdown.”

Presuming he was right at the scene of action, why does he pass the buck to the claims of ‘press reports’? And it's also suspicious the word 'massacre' is only used once before said buck passing.

The tactics of the writing style are more akin to CIA psyops.