Vandal defaces giant Mao portrait
Most of the picture was intact, but workers could be seen in a crane cleaning the lower left part of the portrait, which appeared damaged by soot after the vandal apparently hurled a burning object at it.
Police were swarming the area.
Traffic could pass by, but Tiananmen, the symbolic heart of Communist China, was temporarily cleared of the visitors that normally crowd the square on weekends and the tourist-clogged entrance to the
Police later let visitors back onto the square, which remained under heavy security.
An official at the Tiananmen Administration Committee confirmed there had been an incident but said he had no details.
Calls to the
Tiananmen is considered especially sensitive since it was the site of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations that were eventually crushed by the military. The area usually swarms with plainclothes security who quickly stamp out any signs of dissent.
Chinese journalist Yu Dongyue was jailed for more than 16 years for hurling eggshells filled with red paint at the Mao portrait at the height of the 1989 demonstrations.
He was mentally ill by the time he was released in February 2006.
Despite leading the country in a series of violent political movements that led to millions being purged or killed and left the economy moribund, Mao is still revered by many in China and is seen as a symbol of its strength and unity.
This article comes across as extremely pejorative and biased to me. All this smack-talking about the Chinese Communist Party and how it “brooks no challenges to its authority.” People are always harping about shit like that, what they often forget is just how much good the Communist government has done forAll the same, I really hope that whoever vandalized that portrait is safely out of the country by now because there is no power in the universe that can protect him/her should the
2 comments:
The new Tawainese government is itself doing such things to Chiang-Hai Shek's memoria, according to a friend of mine who spends quite a bit of time there. Weird . . .
Really? That surprises me. I'll have to check that out.
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