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.
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
People can preregister to receive their NT$10,000 (US$325) cash distributed from the central government on Nov. 5 after President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday signed the Special Budget for Strengthening Economic, Social and National Security Resilience, the Executive Yuan told a news conference last night. The special budget, passed by the Legislative Yuan on Friday last week with a cash handout budget of NT$236 billion, was officially submitted to the Executive Yuan and the Presidential Office yesterday afternoon. People can register through the official Web site at https://10000.gov.tw to have the funds deposited into their bank accounts, withdraw the funds at automated teller
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
PEACE AND STABILITY: Maintaining the cross-strait ‘status quo’ has long been the government’s position, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan is committed to maintaining the cross-strait “status quo” and seeks no escalation of tensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, rebutting a Time magazine opinion piece that described President William Lai (賴清德) as a “reckless leader.” The article, titled “The US Must Beware of Taiwan’s Reckless Leader,” was written by Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Defense Priorities think tank. Goldstein wrote that Taiwan is “the world’s most dangerous flashpoint” amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that the situation in the Taiwan Strait has become less stable
RSS