Tyranny Before Twitter

Written by Jeb Golinkin on Monday June 22, 2009

Events in Tehran are often compared to the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That was 20 years ago – yet a different world. The man who took the famous photograph of the lone protester confronting a line of tanks, Charles Cole, described how he preserved that image for the world.

I realized that the public security bureau had been watching us from the other rooftop by binoculars. So I went in and took the film out of the camera and reloaded it into the plastic filmcan, and went into the toilet, took off the top of the toilet and put it in the holding tank, put the toilet top back on… And shortly after that, probably 10, 15 minutes afterwards, the public security bureau broke through the door. They got one other roll of film from the shots that I'd taken from the night before, and they were pretty satisfied they'd cleaned up the situation… About a day-and-a-half later, I worked my way back in through the back streets to the Beijing Hotel, and luckily, nobody had flushed the toilet.

Back in 1989, it took a day and a half and a considerable amount of luck for the world to see the famous picture of the “Tank Man.” Today, similarly powerful images can be instantly uploaded to the internet, available for all to see and to judge. This is bound to change the way events in Iran play out.
Category: News