Speak!

I was in graduate school, when the protests gathered momentum in Tiananmen Square.  As a news junkie, as one who always wondered whether India or China had a better development model, and as one who was increasingly devoted to individual rights and democracy, I had been reading news reports about the student demonstrations and getting pumped up myself.  

The sight of something like a Statue of Liberty in the middle of the protests was remarkable and inspiring.

Only a couple of days after the quickly assembled statue of the lady with the torch went up, the Chinese government sent in the military.  We watched on television the remarkably surreal video of a lone man standing up to a column of military tanks.

The sight of tanks was ominous, and echoed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that we had read about and watched with tears rolling down the dramatization of those events in the movie Gandhi,

As tRump reminds us, political structures that do not respect and value individual rights and lives have always gone to extremes to squash protests and eliminate dissent.  Even when they are fully aware that the world is watching.

In tribute, and as a reminder, I leave you with this:

Speak
By Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith's shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.