Scusate se insistiamo. Su Dongzhou è calato il silenzio di tomba (letteralmente) delle autorità cinesi e certamente non è una sorpresa. E' per questo che chi ne può parlare (noi, in occidente) deve farlo, è quasi un obbligo morale. Oggi Howard French ci riporta sulla scena del delitto descrivendo le tattiche del regime per impedire la diffusione di notizie e normalizzare il teatro degli eventi:
Now, a stilted calm prevails, a cover-up so carefully planned that the
small town looks like a relic from the Cultural Revolution, as if the
government had decided to re-educate the entire population. Banners
hang everywhere, with slogans in big red characters proclaiming things
like, "Stability is paramount" and "Don't trust instigators."
And residents have been warned that if they must explain the deaths of
loved ones - many of whom were shot dead during a tense standoff with
the police in which fireworks, blasting caps and crude gasoline bombs
were thrown by the villagers - they should simply say their relatives
were blown up by their own explosives.
L'ultima parola comunque non è ancora detta. Philip Pan spiega perché:
"In Memory of Ms. Liu Hezhen," which Lu Xun wrote in 1926 after warlord
forces opened fire on protesters in Beijing and killed one of his
students, is a classic of Chinese literature. But why did thousands of
people read or post notes in an online forum devoted to the essay last
week?
A close look suggests an answer that China's governing Communist Party
might find disturbing: They were using Lu's essay about the 1926
massacre as a pretext to discuss a more current and politically
sensitive event -- the Dec. 6 police shooting of rural protesters in
the southern town of Dongzhou in Guangdong province.
In the 10 days since the shooting, which witnesses said resulted in the
deaths of as many as 20 farmers protesting land seizures, the Chinese
government has tried to maintain a blackout on the news, barring almost
all newspapers and broadcasters from reporting it and ordering major
Internet sites to censor any mention of it. Most Chinese still know
nothing of the incident.
But it is also clear that many Chinese have already learned about the
violence and are finding ways to spread and discuss the news on the
Internet, circumventing state controls with e-mail and instant
messaging, blogs and bulletin board forums.
Another Kdnet forum set up as a "silent memorial" to the victims of the
shooting drew nearly 30,000 visits. And in a third forum, users from
across the country posted a series of short messages containing
variations of a simple protest against censorship: "I know."
"They don't want me to know, but I know."
Per quanto censurato, bloccato, filtrato, Internet sta minando alle fondamenta la macchina di controllo delle informazioni e dell'opinione pubblica su cui i despoti di Pechino fondano gran parte del loro potere. Che lo si voglia riconoscere o no, il web si sta dimostrando uno strumento dal potenziale rivoluzionario. E' confortante vedere come i cinesi stiano imparando ad utilizzarlo per aggirare i divieti.
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