A newspaper in southwest China has sacked three of its editors over an advertisement saluting mothers of protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, a source with knowledge of the gaffe said yesterday.
Public discussion of the massacre is still taboo in China and the government has rejected calls to overturn the verdict that the student-led protests were subversive.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when the army crushed the democracy movement on June 4, 1989.
Li Zhaojun, deputy editor-in-chief of the Chengdu Evening News in Sichuan, and two other members of its editorial office had been dismissed, the source said, requesting anonymity.
The newspaper and the Chengdu City government declined to comment. Li could not be reached.
On the 18th anniversary of the crackdown on Monday, the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News ran a tiny ad reading: "Paying tribute to the strong[-willed] mothers of June 4 victims."
The ad noted the date of the crackdown as ``6/4'' instead of using Chinese characters for the two numbers, as it is normally written.
Authorities interrogated newspaper staff to find out how the advertisement slipped past censors. Newspaper ads need to be vetted in China.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post said on Wednesday a young female clerk allowed the tribute to be published because she had never heard of the crackdown. The Post said the woman's age was not known but she had just graduated from school.
She phoned back the person who placed the ad to ask what June 4 meant and he told her it was the date of a mining disaster, the Post said.
It was unclear if the man who placed the advertisement had been arrested.
The man also tried to place the same advertisement with two other Chengdu newspapers, the source said.
"Staff at the other two newspapers also did not know what June 4 was, but they phoned and asked their superiors and he walked away," the source said.
Chinese television news and major newspapers do not mention the anniversary.
The 32-page Chengdu Evening News, which boasts a circulation of 200,000, has not suspended publication.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
SHIFT PRIORITIES: The US should first help Taiwan respond to actions China is already taking, instead of focusing too heavily on deterring a large-scale invasion, an expert said US Air Force leaders on Thursday voiced concerns about the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) missile capabilities and its development of a “kill web,” and said that the US Department of Defense’s budget request for next year prioritizes bolstering defenses in the Indo-Pacific region due to the increasing threat posed by China. US experts said that a full-scale Chinese invasion of Taiwan is risky and unlikely, with Beijing more likely to pursue coercive tactics such as political warfare or blockades to achieve its goals. Senior air force and US Space Force leaders, including US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink and
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
Czech officials have confirmed that Chinese agents surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March 2024 and planned a collision with her car as part of an “unprecedented” provocation by Beijing in Europe. Czech Military Intelligence learned that their Chinese counterparts attempted to create conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, which “did not go beyond the preparation stage,” agency director Petr Bartovsky told Czech Radio in a report yesterday. In addition, a Chinese diplomat ran a red light to maintain surveillance of the Taiwanese
RSS