The sale of Corbis, a photography archive owned by Bill Gates, gives the new owner, Visual China Group, control over photographs of immense cultural and commercial value, including Marilyn Monroe on a subway grate, Rosa Parks on a bus, Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock and Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue, The New York Times reports:
But it has been the transfer of images from the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square, an event that China’s Communist Party has aggressively blotted out of public view ever since, that has perhaps raised the most alarm.
The worry is legitimate, said Xiao Qiang, the founder of China Digital Times, which tracks Chinese media censorship. “It should not be treated as a surprise if a Chinese media company’s decisions and actions were aligned with the policies and practices of the Chinese government,” he said.
The photo of the tank man Wang Weilin could be completely sealed, says Initiatives for China [a grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy]:
As a hero fighting against the totalitarian rule, he is the witness to the massacre and the crimes committed by CCP. The more desperate the CCP is to hide their crimes, the more we need to speed up the signature drive to find the two tank men, because we cannot let the hero fall, justice become undone, or history become twisted.
Here are the ways to sign:
(1). Go to http://tinyurl.com/finding2tankmen
(2). Enter First Name, Last Name, Email, Country, City or Zip code.
(3). If a street address is asked, and privacy is a concern, please enter N/A.
(4). Click sign
Note: When more than one person wants to use the same device to sign, the previous signer must click the small arrow beside the signer’s name and then click Log Out before the following one to enter through the link.
