Thoughtless actions often have strong reactions

In April 1989, the mysterious death of pro-reform Chinese Communist party leader, Hu Yaobang, led to protests by youth in Beijing’s Tiananmen square.

- HARSHA KAKAR

On 4 June, PLA soldiers accompanied by tanks were sent to forcibly regain control. The takeover was brutal. Figures of protestor casualties vary from a few hundred to a few thousand with thousands more injured. Many fled abroad to escape prosecution. China till date refuses to release details of casualties.

Fearing a repeat, the Tiananmen square incident has vanished from Chinese history books. A re-emergence of similar protests is a perpetual concern within China’s ruling elite and hence they maintain tight vigil over social media and suppress any dissent at the nascent stage itself. Its strict monitoring of its population is solely to suppress any similar uprising.

The acquittal of policeman George Zimmerman in July 2013 over the killing of African American teen Trayvon Martin seventeen months earlier, led to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. It began with a simple Hashtag ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ on social media and has never looked back. The movement gained steam following deaths of two more African Americans, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, at the hands of local police in 2014.

An estimated 20 million people protested globally against the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman in 2020. Currently #BlackLivesMatter is a global movement as every country has its own George Floyd. The movement played a significant role in the presidential elections of 2016.

The ‘Me Too’ movement founded in 2006 by Tarana Burke became a global movement after numerous sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein in 2017. Both these movements can no longer be ignored.