Cherishing democracy - Enjoy your freedom – go and vote

TWENTY years ago today the Chinese authorities crushed a pro-democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square. Hundreds, some say thousands, of demonstrators were either shot or crushed under tanks.

To this day Chinese authorities suppress discussion of the events and, in a spectacular feat of information management – or a plain denial of history straight out of Orwell’s handbook of authoritarianism – there are tens of millions of young Chinese people who have never heard of the June 4 massacres. It does not feature widely in public discourse or in the Chinese education system. The never-to-be-forgotten images of a student standing bravely in front of a tank may be more familiar to those living outside of China than they are to that brave student’s compatriots.

Even this morning huge efforts are being made to ensure that there are no commemorations. Prominent critics are under house arrest and newspapers have been banned from making any mention of 1989.