Little-Acorn
Well-Known Member
24 years ago today, on June 4, 1989, Chinese students and other citizens faced down large portions of the Chinese military at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, and other locations throughout China. The Chinese people refer to them as the "June 4 uprisings", since they took place in more than 300 cities across China, not just in Tiananmen Square.
Due to the lack of information coming out of China's tightly government-controlled media, death toll estimates nationwide range from several hundred, to thousands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
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BTW, today the Chinese government is frantically blocking internet searches for terms like "June 4", "uprising", "protest", etc.
Someone photoshopped the famous image of a well-dressed man with a briefcase facing down four Chinese tanks in the largest open public square in China, Tian An Men Square. The Photoshop artist replaced the four tanks in the picture, with four giant rubber ducks; and sent the altered photo out on Twitter as a joke.
And as a result, the Chinese government is even blocking searches for the terms "rubber duck" and "yellow duck"!
Leftist totalitarians can sure look stupid sometimes, here and abroad, when they try to enforce their agendas.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored
Tiananmen Square online searches censored by Chinese authorities
Banned search terms include 'today', 'tomorrow' and date references in attempt to quell protest
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013 08.55 EDT
Twitter image mocking Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square, adapted from AP's 1989 photograph (the search term 'Big Yellow Duck' is banned). Photograph: Twitter/weibo.com/weibolg
It takes a very significant date for the word "today" to be deemed too sensitive to mention. But 24 years after the Chinese government's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, "today" is part of a long list of search terms that have been censored on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog.
Other banned words include "tomorrow," "that year," "special day," and many number combinations that could refer to 4 June 1989, such as 6-4, 64, 63+1, 65-1, and 35 (shorthand for May 35th).
Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called "June 4th incident" in the country's media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse.
Many of their posts have been embedded in pictures, which can often elude automatic detection: a girl with her hand over her mouth; a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks; the iconic "tank man" picture with its tanks photoshopped into four giant rubber ducks, a reference to a well-known art installation in Hong Kong's Victoria harbour.
Most of these pictures, too, have since been scrubbed clean. By Tuesday afternoon, the term "big yellow duck" had also been blocked.
Due to the lack of information coming out of China's tightly government-controlled media, death toll estimates nationwide range from several hundred, to thousands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
----------------------------------------------
BTW, today the Chinese government is frantically blocking internet searches for terms like "June 4", "uprising", "protest", etc.
Someone photoshopped the famous image of a well-dressed man with a briefcase facing down four Chinese tanks in the largest open public square in China, Tian An Men Square. The Photoshop artist replaced the four tanks in the picture, with four giant rubber ducks; and sent the altered photo out on Twitter as a joke.
And as a result, the Chinese government is even blocking searches for the terms "rubber duck" and "yellow duck"!
Leftist totalitarians can sure look stupid sometimes, here and abroad, when they try to enforce their agendas.
-------------------------------------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored
Tiananmen Square online searches censored by Chinese authorities
Banned search terms include 'today', 'tomorrow' and date references in attempt to quell protest
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 June 2013 08.55 EDT
Twitter image mocking Chinese censorship of Tiananmen Square, adapted from AP's 1989 photograph (the search term 'Big Yellow Duck' is banned). Photograph: Twitter/weibo.com/weibolg
It takes a very significant date for the word "today" to be deemed too sensitive to mention. But 24 years after the Chinese government's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, "today" is part of a long list of search terms that have been censored on Sina Weibo, the country's most popular microblog.
Other banned words include "tomorrow," "that year," "special day," and many number combinations that could refer to 4 June 1989, such as 6-4, 64, 63+1, 65-1, and 35 (shorthand for May 35th).
Chinese Communist party authorities, fearing a threat to their legitimacy, forbid open discussion of the so-called "June 4th incident" in the country's media and on its internet. Yet internet users have reacted by using ever-more oblique references to commemorate the tragedy, treating censors to an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse.
Many of their posts have been embedded in pictures, which can often elude automatic detection: a girl with her hand over her mouth; a Lego man facing down three green Lego tanks; the iconic "tank man" picture with its tanks photoshopped into four giant rubber ducks, a reference to a well-known art installation in Hong Kong's Victoria harbour.
Most of these pictures, too, have since been scrubbed clean. By Tuesday afternoon, the term "big yellow duck" had also been blocked.
