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One of the places where the Iranian uprising against falsified election was given a narrow coverage was China. An attempt was made indeed in PRC to block online images of demonstrations meanwhile official media tried to ignore the clamor.
The reason was clear enough: any mass protest and its brutal suppression raises uncomfortable memories of Tian’anmen Square on the 20th anniversary of China’s nasty crackdown of student movement.
Now China faces itself violent troubles in its Xinjiang western region as Muslim Uighurs confront Han Chinese in what seems to be the worst nation’s ethnic conflict in years. As in Iran, the authorities are trying to repress the protest movement through a combination of technology and force: cutting off cell phone service, blocking the Net, shooting people and sending the riot police.
The Chinese unrest poses an interesting dilemma. What is Iran? An Islamic republic, whose leader aspires to lead the Muslim world, to make of Muslims rising up in an authoritarian state? Islamic commitment requires solidarity with the Uighurs, while repressive solidarity requires pledge with Chinese security forces. The answer in the current Iranian climate has been predictable enough: almost no mention in the official media of the Chinese riots –and no mention that one party is Muslim.
These are both authoritarian states that have generally stopped short of totalitarian control, adapting to the 21st century by limiting freedom and deploying repression where it is critical to the maintenance of the system, but allowing some measure of liberty –to travel, trade, speak out– where it is considered harmless. Call them the new “Red Line” states. Live your lives and make money, they say, but never cross the red lines, which include organizing against the system and denouncing the leadership in place.
These methods have seemed effective but became unsuccessful in recent weeks. The Iranian regime, surprised by a last minute wave of support to the opposition leader, Mir Hussein Mussavi, opted in mid June for a brutal crackdown in defense of an electoral lie. The shift from control to savage repression was abrupt and devastating, pushing many young Iranians from reluctant consent to .total opposition.
Despite this, many young Iranians have borne witness –with mobile video images and photos, through twitter and other shapes of social networking– and have thus amassed a permanent global act of indictment against the usurpers of mid June 2009. the Neda effect –the image of eyes blanking, life abating and blood blotching across the face of young student Neda– will undermine the regime over time.
China makes no electoral simulation in its one-party system, but it too, has been temporarily undone by the power of word and image spreading across the Internet. The current unrest in the Xinjiang western desert region has its origins in an incident thousands of kilometers away in southern Guangdong province, where a Uighur dormitory was attacked in June by Han Chinese and at least two people were killed.
Photographs appeared online. The government tried and failed to delete them. Calls for protest spread through web sites and instant messaging. Again, the government attempted to block online discussion of the incident. But Uighur rage had gone viral.
By the official count 183 people have now been killed in the protests. As in Iran, images of police officers, confronting weeping women burgeon, carrying emotional charge all through the country and across the world.
Both Iran and PRC have tried to blame people outside the country for the turmoil. They have identified foreign agents they assert are orchestrating troubles. They should look closer to home.
Repression, injustice and brutality have encountered a force hard to control: the empowerment of people through technology. Communication feeds a hunger for freedom that may in the end be stronger than any red line.
