CSM: China covers up Tiananmen knifing amid 60th anniversary security boost

rlsrls08

http://features.csmonitor.com/gl ... ary-security-boost/

China covers up Tiananmen knifing amid 60th anniversary security boost

Tweets on incident that killed two, injured 14 on Thursday were taken down, and newspapers and blogs were censored.

By Peter Ford | Staff Writer 09.18.09


BEIJING – Less than two weeks from a massive celebration of China’s 60th anniversary as a Communist state, Beijing is flooded with policemen and the city is on the highest state of security alert permissible outside wartime.

But that did not stop a man going beserk with a knife yesterday evening not far from Tiananmen Square, where a huge military parade is planned for Oct. 1. He killed two people and injured 14.

So much for the massive security presence. But what is equally striking is that the public has been told practically nothing about the dramatic incident.

The state news agency Xinhua issued a terse report Thursday evening giving the man’s name, home town, and the number of his victims. On Friday it released another brief article saying he had been drunk when he went on the rampage.

No newspaper website was allowed to print anything more. Blogs and Twitter posts discussing the stabbings and adding supposed details of what happened were censored almost as soon as they went up. (The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, for example, reported that three men were wielding knives and that two escaped.)

Perhaps the authorities were embarrassed that something so dreadful could happen a few hundred yards from Tiananmen Square at a time when it was blanketed with policemen guarding preparations for a parade rehearsal due to be held throughout Friday night.

Perhaps the perpetrator had just lost his job, or suffered some other indignity that would not promote the image of harmony and peace that the government is so keen to present at the anniversary.

But perhaps, too, the massive and sudden censorship reveals something about the Chinese leadership’s idea of security – and of reality. They can’t keep people safe from an attack like this (nor can any government) but they can stop people talking about it, and it is the talking that really makes them nervous.

It is as if they think that if nobody knows what happened, it didn’t happen. But even if nobody hears a tree falling in the forest, that does not mean that it did not fall.

rlsrls08

1. joy | 09.18.09

People in west need to understand China is not a developed country, it’s a developing country with 1.3b population, and it only started to ramp up for 30 years. Compare it with US which has been developing more than 100 years makes no sense.

Tiananmen Square is a very sensitive area in China, I wouldn’t be supried if there are thousands out of the 1.3 billion population want to suicide or bring a killing spree for all kind of different reasons.

Talking about cover up, do you know how many people suicided in US every year? and how many did you see media covered them up? And didn’t US gov and media cover up how US soldiers get killed in Afganstan? And “Perhaps the US authorities were embarrassed”?


2. MJ | 09.18.09

I wouldn’t be as concerned about China if it wasn’t for their continued expansion across the globe with increasingly aggressive postures. How long will the world sleep as this fascist power grows with Western consumerism feeding it? If one is to make any comparisons, it should be to early 1930s Germany.


3. OverseasChinese | 09.18.09

Western media think they have the God-given right to sensationalize or hide anything whenever they see fit. Why not the Chinese media? No, I am not defending “their” practice. Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes don’t. There is no black and white.

But all that whatever our “enemy” does is half-empty, our “friend” does is half-full pisses readers off.

magicboy

渔音谦谦

认领。。