‘Tiananmen focus to reveal how China treats its own’

NEW DELHI: RSS organ ‘Organiser’ has said its hard-hitting cover story recalling the killing of peaceful protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square was intended to bring out the Communist leadership’s brutality towards Chinese people.
Organiser editor Praful Ketkar told TOI the intent behind the cover story was to highlight that China’s response to the Covid-19 crisis, where it has suppressed figures and blocked a probe into the origin of the outbreak, was similar to the way it had crushed student protesters who were peacefully agitating for political freedoms in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
Being an RSS organ, the Organiser is expected to be aligned with the posture of the BJP dispensation. Though the Modi government has not publicly criticised China for failing to alert the world in time about the Wuhan outbreak and blocking demands for an independent probe, it has gradually been upping the ante over the issue. It has joined the demand for a probe and also called for reforming the WHO, a pitch which is seen as shorthand for the global public health body’s indulgence of Beijing’s cover-up.
PM Modi breaking away from the traditional restraint to discuss the Chinese bullying on the border with the US and publicising the departure was seen as a signal to China; especially because it came on the heels of home minister Amit Shah’s comment in TOI that Beijing’s attempt to hide facts about the pandemic had justified India’s decision not to join the RCEP.
However, by training the spotlight on Tiananmen, Organiser has gone several steps ahead of the Modi government in calling out China over its human rights record.
Ketkar said China’s attempt to cover up the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan has, besides attracting global opprobrium, generated considerable resentment among its own people.
“Even Chinese think-tanks are worried that there might be a Tiananmen Square-like backlash in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis in the country. Although China has tried to whitewash the 1989 people’s uprising, it continues to haunt them,” he said.
Ketkar said while the Communist regime in China was so wary about the Tiananmen massacre that it didn't brook any conversation on the People's Liberation Army unleashing tanks on peaceful students, it was indulging in brazen aggression towards other countries. “While the world is battling the Covid-19 crisis, China is involved in aggressive posturing in Taiwan, South China Sea, Hong Kong and now Ladakh. Whenever there is a crisis with the Communist regime, it behaves aggressively internally or with bordering nations,” he said.
On its cover, Organiser has used the iconic photograph of a solitary young man standing up to a column of tanks rushed to break up the protests by students demanding, among other things, more political freedom.
Titled ‘Revisiting Tiananmen Square’, the Sangh organ mentioned the effort made by the Chinese leadership to gloss over what has been widely seen as a massacre of peaceful protesters.