[BITList] Free Tibet.

[John Feltham]

Chinese Tyrants Can’t Stand the Smell of Jasmine

In what must be considered one of the strangest and most perverse efforts by a tyrannical government to repress dissent, China’s Communist regime hasmounted a full-scale effort to ban the sale of jasmine. Even the mention of the flower anywhere on the Internet is forbidden.

The reason for this bizarre ruling reported by the New York Times is that the revolt in Tunisia earlier this year became known as the “Jasmine Revolution.” The successful effort to oust an authoritarian government has so scared the Chinese leadership that they have gone so far as to censor videos of President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Qua”—a song that is a traditional tribute to jasmine that was played at every medal ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The Chinese characters for jasmine have been blocked on cell-phone texts, and the China International Jasmine Festival scheduled for this summer has been abruptly canceled.

Calls for China’s own jasmine revolt were scattered and few. Beijing has so thoroughly intimidated its internal critics with brutal repression that few democracy advocates were foolish enough to invite the regime’s revenge for any acts of defiance. As with every other measure intended to stifle dissent against the Communist regime, the government counts on a population that is rightly fearful of the consequences of revolt and an international community that is apathetic about the fate of the inmates of the world’s largest tyranny.

But the Times brings home the inanity and cruelty of the regime when it writes about the fate of the poor flower growers and sellers who are the principal victims of this bit of Communist caprice. Most have never heard of Tunisia. Nor have they any notion of why a simple flower must be banished from the streets in order to comfort their masters. Those who wish to understand the basic nature of tyranny could do no better than to read this story. And those who argue, as many here do to their shame, that the Chinese neither want nor need freedom should read it as well.




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