- The Soviet flag over Reichstag
One cannot escape this epic picture from witnessing if he/she is a history buff.
Berlin had fallen on 2nd May 1945 to the Red Army. Berlin had turn into rubbles and dust-the consequence of battle between the communist Soviets and the Nazi Germans. To celebrate the victory, few Soviet soldiers raised the sickle and the hammer flag over Reichstag, one of the most historical edifices of Germany that had been the seat of Parliament from 1871 to 1918.
The things that followed after this picture put the world in a frozen geopolitical conflict termed as the Cold War that lasted till the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. What an irony!
2. Agim Shala crosses through a barbed Wire fence
Kosovar refugee, 2-year-old Agim Shala, was passed through a barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparents at a camp run by United Arab Emirates in Kukes, Albania. The photo was taken on March 3, 1999.
The circumstances that led to this unfortunate heart wrenching event was the Yugoslavia Civil/Ethnic Wars that lasted for more than 10 years killing as many as 130,000 people and splitting up Yugoslavia into 8 countries namely Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, Kosovo(Partially recognised) and Vojvodina(Partially recognised) .
3. The Migrant Mother
This picture turned into a symbolism for the Great Depression, the longest, widest and most disastrous depression of the 20th century which made people so hopeless and helpless that many turned to committing suicides to escape the impoverishment and agony!
The lady in the picture is Florence Owens Thompson. She was the mother of 7 and she struggled to survive with her kids. She worked as a migrant worker someday picking cotton at one farm, another day picking peas at the other and this way she earned her “not so sufficient” living. The picture was shot just after she had sold the tyres of her car to buy food for her children. The other days the children were eating frozen vegetables and birds that they caught and killed!
4. The Tank Man and Tiananmen Square protests of 1989
The sudden death of Hu Yaobang, the then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, a person accused to be too liberal ,west aligned and reformist and threat to the cultural revolution and socialism in China, triggered protests by students and democrats in the Chinese capital, Beijing . This protest also voiced for social reforms, demanded more freedom of press and screamed against nepotism and widespread corruption in China. The Chinese government broke all humanitarian barrier and ordered to open fire on the demonstrators. More than 1000 people,mainly students, were killed that day. A massacre that stunned and shook the world.
This all happened on 4th June 1989. The day after, i.e on 5th June, the tanks were returning to their bases. As the tanks made their way on the roads an unidentified man stopped in front of them as a show of confrontation and protest. The tanks carefully tried to move past him, but he repeatedly changed his position to obstruct the path of the tanks. He was quite non violent evident from the videos that were shot to record this event. It is said this continued for several minutes and a dreadful silence prevailed between the two parties. It all ended after the old man had a brief conversation with the tank commander. May be he was trying to set an example that a chineese commoner does not fears oppression and dictatorial regime?
5. The drowned Syrian kid
The world felt sad plight of the Syrian refugees when this picture with the news made global headlines across all leading newspapers. Fleeing the Syrian War, the boy, Alan Kurdi drowned with several other passengers/refugees when they were trying to cross the Mediterranean to enter Greece shortly after leaving the Turkish coast of Bodrum. This picture was so loud that many countries immediately sought out to help and shelter the Syrian refugees. Parliamentarians were moved, donations began coming in from all directions ,media began covering the Syrian refugee crisis like never before..
6. The burning Buddhist monk
Raids on Buddhist monasteries, internment and harassment of Buddhists in South Vietnam in the 1960s led to discontentment and bitterness among the Vietnamese Buddhists. The Buddhist monk, Thích Quảng Đức, immolated himself to death at a busy Saigon road to protest against the south Vietnamese government’s discriminatory policies against the Buddhists. This picture was widely circulated in the world and brought attention to the policies of the south Vietnamese government.
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