Jallianwala Bagh. Tiananmen. Gezi Park.

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.

Though there were a number of students from China, I always hesitated discussing such sensitive topics with them.  It was almost an unwritten rule that any troubling aspect about China was off limits.

Once, I accidentally crossed that line and asked a classmate, Rongsheng about Tibet.  He sensed where I was going and immediately made it clear that Tibet is, and always has been, a part of China and that the government would, therefore, take every possible to step to keep the country whole.  Case closed. End of discussions.

I felt it was a tragedy that I could not engage with Chinese students and get a sense of how they perceived the Indo-China war of 1962, or about Mao's disastrous experiments, or the then contemporary events at Tiananmen Square.

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.  I watched on television the tanks rolling in.

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,

Political structures that do not respect and value individual rights and lives have always gone to extremes to squash protests and eliminate dissent, even if that means killing many even with the world witnessing.

That is now unfolding now in Sudan.

Nicholas Kristof, recalls what he witnessed at Tiananmen Square 30 years ago, and concludes with this:

One day I believe we will witness the arrival of freedom in the world’s most populous country. In my mind’s eye, I envision a memorial erected on Tiananmen Square to the heroes of 1989, perhaps taking the form of a weeping rickshaw driver with a wounded student.

I hope Kristof's vision comes true. 

I, for one, have no hopes that individual rights and democracy will become the basis for China's politics and, therefore, do not envision a memorial at Tiananmen Square.

Caption at the source:
In Tiananmen Square in 1989, a symbolic Statue of Liberty named the "Goddess of Democracy" was erected during the protests.