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.

A blanket blackout has been imposed, access to popular networking websites such as Twitter and BBC television reports inside China have been blocked.

The authorities have even gone so far as to co-ordinate university exams to begin this morning in what appears to be an attempt to keep students in their classrooms.

In the liberal West it is easy to be critical of such measures, and the mass murders that gave rise to them, but we are not without blemish and should be aware of our own history too.

Criticism of China may even be subliminally linked to the great growth of that country’s international influence and power as none of us who cherish the tolerant, humanist instincts that shape our culture could accept the everyday repression that defines that country of 1,330,044,544 – a July 2008 estimate – souls.

Tomorrow we will have an opportunity to exercise the right that those who protested at Tiananmen Square died for. We will have an opportunity to vote to decide who represents us at local and European levels. We may be deeply angry with some of those offering themselves for office, we may be appalled at their behaviour and croneyism, but we do have a say in who gets elected. We know that our political system is rotten and that it needs radical, deep reform, but we can vote for those who promise those changes or not. Of course we can do much more than vote, we can participate and bring about change through political activism rather than the ballot box, an option still denied in China.

Democracy is a tender enough creature – as the daily disembowelling of Gordon Brown’s government shows – and it needs the participation of those who benefit from it to be strong.

If the Tiananmen anniversary does not convince you to vote tomorrow consider another episode in the history of the fight for democracy.

Neatly enough this Saturday marks the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the day the Allies sacrificed thousands of lives to reclaim Europe. The briefest consideration of what went on in Normandy all those years ago will convince you that the ballot card is to be cherished and not discarded like a broken election promise.

Use it or stop moaning.