Standing

So, you're some unimportant, average person in your city. You know there's some kind of protest or sit-in going on nearby - you walk through the park regularly, and it's been on the news - but you're not participating. You may agree, you may disagree, doesn't really matter.

You've been out buying groceries, and on your way back, you decide to cut across the square like you always do. As you cross the street, you see a line of tanks - of your own government's military - heading away where the protestors (mostly students, but almost all citizens) were. Where they'd just killed hundreds if not thousands.

What do you do?

What kind of a person does it take to go from a casual walk home to standing in front of a moving line of tanks? What went through his mind? We don't know his name, his history, his motivations, or anything - all we know is what was caught on film: a man standing alone on a road.

If it happened in your city - if you were walking along and saw a line of tanks heading towards a protest nearby - what would you do? Would it matter who the protestors were? If they were democratic students or religious fundamentalists or just a bunch of people having a bad day? Would you hesitate? Would you keep walking? Or would you stand them down?

What kind of person are you?

(As a note, I'm explicitly not using certain words and phrases here. The events of that day twenty-three years ago are still heavily censored in that country. It has been written out of history books, is banned from all forms of media, and was the cause of books and such being burned. The people who most need to know about the events that happened - that nation's youth of today - are officially forbidden from learning about it. Think about that a while.)