Tiananmen Square

It was exactly twenty years ago today that my belief in authority died. It had been suffering for quite some time, and it was better off dead. But the way it died was traumatic.

The late eighties were troubled by uprisings and protests and general political chaos around the entire world. Even Norway had its share as neo nazis clashed with left wing extremists and anarchists, and the police between them with horses and long hard batons. But this was not how my belief in authority died.

Communism was skipping along on one wounded leg, and though the Berlin wall was still going to stand there for another five months and five days, we all knew what way things were heading. And we were right, mostly, withing two years the soviet union and all its european satelites (barring one) had changed regime and was turning towards democracy. The general idea was that communism was over.

But not so.

In China a large number of disparate organizations, mostly run by students, had been assembling all over China. Their demands were as disparate as the number of participants, but in genereal they demanded reform. The protests lasted for several days, and here in the west we thought that the end had come to Deng Xiao Peng and his tyrranical cohorts. Evidently they also feared this, and they had very little scrouples about calling in the army. The results were thousands of dead students. Nobody knows how many. The chinese authorities claim somewhere in abundance of 200, while other sources generally range from somewhere over 3000 to as much as 7000. With perhaps as many as 30,000 wounded.

And what did our governments, parliaments and diplomats do? Generally speaking not a thing. In the twenty years since they have done even less. Half assed mentions of human rights aren't much worth in the face of the potentially largest consumer market in the world. It's shamefull. Politicians talk about ideals, but when push comes to shove what really matters is employment and taxation, and their own salaries.

I remain an optimist in some way, but I know now that the state will oppose change by any means it has at its disposal. The state is hardly ethical when it comes to survival. I also know that change is likely to be slow and arduous. But still, I know that change is inevitable. We cannot let our children and grandchildren be subjected to people that massacre students, or idly stand by as its done.

"Smash the control images, smash the control machine." WSB