Tiananmen commemorations, a perfect example of disinformation

Last Thursday, we published a post about the 48,000 mourners who gathered in Hong Kong to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacre. A blogger noticed that for the first time ever, China's state press followed the annual event. However, their coverage of the demonstrations was missing an important piece of information...

Chinese TV channel CCTV chose to report on the demonstrations by showing images of the protestors when they sat down for a minute's silence to commemorate victims of the earthquake. Not one word, on the other hand, was said about the Tiananmen Square remembrance service, which was the reason for the gathering in the first place.

Blogger Zonaeuropa translated this very poetic, albeit completely biased, commentary by the Chinese TV station.

On the evening of June 4th, many Hong Kong citizens came down to Victoria Park to participate in the candlelight assembly to commemorate the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. They sat down on the soccer fields and held candlesticks. As the evening grew darker, more candles were lit to form an ocean. The candlelight silently expressed the sad and well-meaning sentiments of the Hong Kong people towards their compatriots. The light drizzle did not dampen the passion and sincerity of the people of Hong Kong. (...)"

Comments

internet censorship

Submitted by kim (not verified) on Thu, 12/06/2008 - 06:39.

China’s censorship of the media and the Internet means it can go on successfully concealing human rights abuses, like what happened at Tiananmen Square 19 years ago.

Censorship means all sorts of human rights abuses are hidden in China – execution statistics a state secret, important news events go unreported, historical events aren't taught in schools and people whose rights have been violated are frightened into silence.

Sign Amnesty International’s pledge - http://action.uncensor.com.au/pledge/ - and help send a message to the Chinese Government that censorship is unacceptable or add an uncensor badge – http://action.uncensor.com.au/get_a_badge/ – to your blog or website. Why? Because human rights matter.