.... A Red Salute!

Today is Fourth June and also the sensitive twentieth anniversary of “The Tiananmen Incident” in China. For all those who do not know what this incident is, I suggest you Google or Wikipedia it out to learn more! One is not supposed to write (or read or talk) about this “taboo subject” here lest fall under the watchful eagle eye of the “big brother”.

Leading up to this day, a lot of websites (and a lot of popular proxy sites such as kproxy.com) including youtube, hotmail, twitter, flickr, blogspot, wordpress and bing are blocked in China, to ensure there is limited searches and online protests demonstrated by the local nationals in commemoration of this day. I have observed that, particularly in China, internet is a very important platform used to discuss or criticize issues and blogging is a la mode. A lot of people take into blogging and chat forums passionately. The sentiments will definitely be high around the date of the incident and hence this move by the concerned to curb that “right”. It appears that the News channels such as CNN and BBC are blocked for most part of the day due to the frequency of words such as “In China today..”, or “In Beijing today…” or “Twenty years ago in Beijing…” etc used in their news relays. Of course, RTI and FoS can be controlled here!

I read that the capital city of Beijing will be heavily guarded with a lot of people being asked (read forced) to stay indoors today and foreign journalists & newspaper teams are not allowed to go to “the Tiananmen square”, to ensure the day passes by “peacefully”. I read further that, every year the last Sunday prior to the fourth day of this month will see the people of Hong Kong demonstrate publicly calling for justice. Being a former British colony, Hong Kong is probably the only place in China where matters such as these can be venerated openly. A local group there called the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (Yes, their website is also blocked), supports this demonstration by designing standard t-shirts for the event. However, this year they saw a lot of people design their own t-shirts with “protest slogans” and the “incident-related images” on it and share with others online. During the day, a lot of protests and candle-vigils will also be held in various parts of the city, in their attempt to force the Mainland government to acknowledge and apologize for that day. Although I am tempted to include images of the t-shirts here on this post, I refrain for the same reason I mentioned earlier.

I for one do not quite believe that these protesters dare wear these t-shirts anywhere in Hong Kong (or China) after the protests are over!......Lal Salaam!

Candlelight vigils in Hong Kong

From Picture Courtesy: BBC ....

From Picture Courtesy: BBC....