20 Years After Tiananmen Square: You Can’t Even Mark It Online

Twenty years after the crackdown on the protest in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, people around the world will mark the anniversary, remembering the horror of the response by the Chinese government and the bravery of the students, determined stand up to their oppressors and at the same time, highlighting to the world their plight.

But in China, it will of course be much harder to mark the anniversary, and only for those that actually know about the event considering it’s been wiped from Chinese history. Yahoo News reports of the security in place avoiding any marking of the event.

Foreign journalists were barred from the vast square as both uniformed and plainclothes police fanned out across the plaza that had been the epicenter of the student-led movement that was crushed by the military on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

The square was closed Wednesday for a welcoming ceremony for the prime minister of Malaysia and had not been reopened as of midnight. Tiananmen Square is usually closed only temporarily during important events such as the opening of the annual legislative session.

Though we should not forget that Yahoo, a few years ago, gave the Chinese government details of a Chinese blogger resulting in his arrest, and likely torture. It seems US companies will happily dispose of ethics in order to maintain a market in the populous country.

But Chinese citizens can’t even mark the anniversary on the Internet. Global Voices Advocacy reports:

With the 20th Anniversary of June 4 approaching, netizens reported that a number of social networking and peer to peer communication websites have been blocked in China, including Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Youtube, Blogspot etc.

On Herdict, a censorship-tracking website, there are reports from all over China on the blocking of twitter since yesterday (June 2). Blogspot has been blocked since middle of May and Youtube has been on and off for a rather long period of time, Windows Live, Bing and Flickr have entered the blocking list at the eve of June 4 anniversary.

You can’t even post a status update about it, Tweet about it, blog about it, let alone mark it in any real sense with like a march or vigil. And it should be said that China is not Communist or Socialist in any way but name.

The Chinese government uses the words ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ as a propaganda tool like George Bush used ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to justify the wars in the Middle East. Genuine Socialists should support struggles against these Stalinist regimes and endeavour to revive the ideas of what Socialism is really about.

It is a disgrace that some groups today that dare to call themselves ‘Socialist’ seek to defend regimes such as China and Cuba when these governments are the antithesis of the genuine ideas of Socialism.

And so genuine Socialists will make the anniversary with condemnation toward the Chinese regime and celebrate the bravery of the Chinese students that should remain a proud example of struggles in the future.

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