Twenty years ago a simple unarmed student protest in the central parts of Beijing began in April 1989, mourning the death of Hu Yaobang. The students frightened the elders who had been in power for 40 years. They reacted badly when the students asked to talk and register their complaints about regime corruption. Deng Xiaoping denounced them as reactionary and anti-Chinese. But the students persisted. The Chinese Communist Party, despite its years of experience, did not know how to deal with peaceful unarmed protest. By the end of May, it was too late. The result was tragic. Zhao Zhiyang, the one member of the Politburo who wanted to talk to students, suffered demotion and then house arrest for the remaining 16 years of his life. Tiananmen became a memorable word.

June is a cruel month. Now we have the tragedy in Iran. China has no democracy whatever. But Iran has been experimenting with a limited form of democracy, call it a Theologically Guided Democracy. The Ayatollahs clear the selection of candidates and then the people vote. This time around, even the carefully selected candidates are not good enough for the Mullahs. Mir Hussein Moussavi is an ex-Prime Minister, a man with a solid record of supporting the Khomeini revolution. Even so, it looks like the Ayatollahs panicked at Moussavi’s popular appeal. Here was a man whose wife openly appeared with him in public and they even held hands! She is articulate and talented. Women scare the godmen of Islam. Moussavi had to go. He was a challenge to the prevailing madness of Islamic Puritanism.

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