China’s many Tiananmens leave a dreadful silence 

All this for the protesters’ “crime” of issuing a cry for greater freedom and democracy. It may be further argued that the so-called “international community” is equally culpable for wringing its collective hands while doing absolutely nothing. 
The Tiananmen Square obscenity itself is enough of a corrosive assault on basic human decency. But there were and are other Tiananmens – simultaneously in Chengdhu and other cities, and ongoing in Xinjiang where as many as 2 million Uighurs are imprisoned in apparent gulags. These places were and are being victimised by Politburo-engineered parallel crackdowns where protesting students and others were “disappeared’, or maybe died while “falling down the stairs” and suchlike. 
Meanwhile, the atomising of considered thought continues. We read nauseating tropes, and the usual slavish obeisance to a totalitarian, monolithic edifice by apologetic lickspittles in these pages, possessed of neither sense, fairness nor reason. This corrosive genuflection to despotism, however, carries its own price, as Orwell warns us: “Threats to freedom of speech, writing or action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” 
To all those conscienceless anilinguists out there, be careful what you wish for. 
Dr Frank
Bangkok