There are stark parallels in the bloody massacres in Tiananmen Square this week and the Golden Temple Parikarma on 5 June 1984. Five years, ten thousand miles and two cultures apart, these tragic events highlight the commonalty of one theme, that truth, freedom and people’s will are universal notions and shall prevail in the end no matter how cruel and powerful the oppressor.
On 3 and 4 June in Tiananmen Square a cynical and arrogant Chinese leadership sent tanks, armored personnel carriers and indiscriminately shooting soldiers against unarmed men, women and children who were asking for democracy. At one point of time during the previous three weeks it had looked as though some form of compromise solution will be possible. The party leadership, however, evidently could not countenance any loss of face.
Close to a million students had been peacefully protesting for greater democracy for over three weeks. Then suddenly trucks tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared in the hundreds and started firing into the wall of innocent people in a bloody spree of mindless killing. Nearly three thousand people were killed during the firing.
At the end of it all Tiananmen Square was virtually empty of all protestors except of the motionless dead bodies of hundreds, nay thousands of innocent people and hundreds of smoldering vehicles and debris. Two days later the official Chinese reports blamed the students for the tragedy and placed the civilian dead at 23 and 400 soldiers missing and another 400 wounded. This was a deceitful lie which no one in this world would believe.
Luckily for the students the world media was watching and recording the events ‘live’ so that people all over the world could watch the events in their living rooms. No amount of propaganda and official lies could distort the truth.
And then the world witnessed the saga of one man stopping a column of tanks in the middle of the Square, which the whole world watched breathlessly. The message was singularly clear the indomitable spirit of one man had triumphed over the war machines of China’s rulers,
A similar drama had unfolded in Punjab on June 5 1984 when thirty thousand Indian troops backed by tanks, artillery guns, helicopters and medium machine guns had indulged in one of the most wanton killing of innocent people who had gathered inside the holy precincts of the Golden Temple to celebrate the Gurpurab of Guru Arjan Dey ji. Thousands perished in the fire. The Indian government placed the blame on the Sikhs and gave the number of the dead a more 239. This was a monumental lie as the world was to discover later.
What added to the Sikh tragedy was that there was no media recording the events so that the Indian government got away with its skillful lies and propaganda for a much longer period of time, Indeed there were several sagas of “one man stopping columns of tanks” but unfortunately there was no record of those.
The message of the two events is clear that guns, tanks and troops cannot crush the indomitable spirit of people and that truth, freedom and independence prevail in the end. Let China’s and India’s leadership take note of it.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 9, 1989
