Nothing Happened Here 20 Years Ago

The Chinese Government has spent the last few days reminding us to not remember what happened in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago today. While there's absolutely no mention of it in the Chinese media here the government censors have shut down access to many foreign websites, Twitter, Hotmail, Flickr etc so we can't read about the thing that didn't happen. Everytime CNN and the BBC have a story about The Thing the screen goes blank until the story is over and then the picture reappears. All discussion of The Thing on the Internet is banned and is quickly erased if it's mentioned. People who claim to have seen The Thing 20 years ago and won't stop mentioning it are put under house arrest, in jail or transported out of Beijing -where nothing happened on June 4th, 1989. The funny thing is that the more the Government reminds people that nothing happened on that day the more we notice it.


It reminds me of how the Japanese people learned how they were losing the war back in 1945. When they noticed that their military's glorious victories were taking place closer and closer to Japan they figured out that something was happening after all.