From Tiananmen To Tehran

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: In The News

(AP)

Twenty years ago – before Twitter, before Facebook and even before the Internet was widely used at all – anti-government protests broke out in China. Though the grievance was different, the participants were similar: students, intellectuals and young people who took to the streets to demand reform. And in Beijing, as in Tehran, some of them ended up dead.

There are no clear numbers on how many died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, but it is believed to be in the thousands – far more than have been killed so far in Iran. Yet the government was essentially successful: The regime stayed in power, dissidents were arrested, and limits on free speech became even more deeply ingrained in the culture.

Could they have done the same today? The Iranian government has similarly tried to censor media coverage, yet the world has had access to an intimate and immediate accounting of the protests, the subsequent killings and the palpable anger in Tehran's streets. And while the situations are not identical, it's certainly notable that after initially backing the election results, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei changed course and said there would be an investigation.

It's not possible to know how the situation would have played out in Beijing had participants and observers had access to the tools available today. But the fact that the world would have been so closely watching would have been a powerful disincentive for the Chinese government to embark upon such a brutal crackdown. Indeed, one can't help but wonder if the 1989 protests, had they taken place today, would have resulted not in a tragic reinforcement the status quo but instead a history-altering sea change.