A step closer to freedom....

The picture you are seeing is of the "Unknown rebel". This was taken during the famous 'Tiananmen Square' protests of 1989 in Beijing when thousands of people assembled to protest against the Communist Party of China (CPC). It symbolizes the helpless voice of a billion people against being denied of basic human rights like freedom of speech.

These immediate reason for these protests was to mourn the death of the CPC secretary general Hu Yaobang, who had been removed by Deng Xiaoping due to his role in the earlier pro-democracy protests of 86-87. Deng Xiaoping was a wonderful leader, who not only corrected the mess left in China by Mao Zedong, but also put China on the path to becoming the 'factory of the world' by initiating many economic reforms. He declared Marxism to be irrelevant in today's world. Remember the famous quote ""No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.

Many intellectuals and students in china thought of the removal of Hu as very unfair and assembled at the Tiananmen square in China to register their protest. It was largely a peaceful and well-ordered protest except one stray incident of violence when three young men threw ink on the huge portrait of Mao Zedong that was hung at the square. These three men were arrested and each received sentences in the range of 15-20 years.

But the party started getting nervous about the escalating scale of the protests. After a series of debates, Deng declared martial law and ordered the military to quell the protestors. This was done in the harshest of manners. People were dragged, kicked, shot and what not. Many of those who were arrested were executed for engaging in counter revolutionary activities. The official figure for the number of deaths was 300, the number of actual deaths could well have been more than 5000.

This dastardly incident always reminds me of our own Jalianwala bagh massacre, in which hundreds of protestors were killed ruthlessly. We got our freedom 28 years after Jalianwala, when will the Chinese people get theirs??