BEIJING, Oct 1, 2025 — As red banners rise and fireworks explode over Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party proclaims another “National Day,” parading the myth of democracy before the world. Yet behind the music and marching soldiers lies a darker truth: seventy-six years not of liberation, but of colonization, repression, and silence.
China claims to celebrate “people’s democracy,” but its reality is one of authoritarian rule where citizens cannot choose their leaders, criticize the Party, or speak freely without fear of punishment. The CCP presents itself as the people’s government, yet the people have no voice. For the nations it has conquered, the lie is even starker.
In Tibet, invaded in 1950, monasteries once filled with prayer have been reduced to rubble, monks imprisoned, and children forced into boarding schools where speaking their own language is forbidden. More than six thousand monasteries have been destroyed, scriptures lost, and even the reincarnation of lamas is subject to Beijing’s approval. This is not autonomy; it is a spiritual and cultural prison.
In East Turkistan, renamed “Xinjiang” by Beijing, over a million Uyghurs and Kazakhs have been herded into camps since 2017. Survivors describe torture, indoctrination, and forced sterilization. Birth rates in Uyghur-majority regions have plummeted, and families are separated as forced labor feeds into global supply chains, tainting clothing, agriculture, and electronics with the mark of slavery.
Hong Kong, once a vibrant city of free speech and open press, has been dismantled under Beijing’s watch. The promise of “One Country, Two Systems” was destroyed with the imposition of the National Security Law in 2020. Journalists have been jailed, newspapers silenced, lawmakers arrested, and protest banners replaced with silence. What remains is a hollow shell where freedom once stood.
Southern Mongolia was the first experiment in assimilation. In 1947, even before the founding of the People’s Republic, Beijing created the so-called Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Mongolian herders were stripped of their livelihoods, their language stripped from schools, their culture steadily erased. What began in Southern Mongolia was repeated in Tibet, East Turkistan, and Hong Kong—a blueprint of control disguised as governance.
Across all these regions the pattern is the same: surveillance cameras replacing community, prisons replacing debate, censorship replacing expression. The CCP waves its red flag and calls it unity, but what it celebrates is domination, not democracy. The world sees fireworks; the occupied see only graves, prison bars, and a future stolen from their children.
As Beijing congratulates itself, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hongkongers, and Southern Mongols mark this day as one of mourning. They remember the lives lost, the cultures suppressed, the freedoms denied. Fireworks cannot hide the blood of the past, and propaganda cannot erase the truth. October 1 is not a National Day; it is a day of occupation, and the world must choose whether to celebrate with Beijing’s lies or to stand with the oppressed demanding freedom.
