China eases its Tiananmen taboo

• Last Updated: April 29. 2009 9:55PM UAE / April 29. 2009 5:55PM GMT

Censors let internet reports through

News stories and video footage on 1989 massacre are accessible for first time in two decades as Google offers photos of ‘Tank Man’

Special Correspondent



beijing // For at least a week, China has allowed unprecedented internet access to information on the June 4 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen news stories written in English and video footage by news reporters were accessible for viewing or download for the first time in 20 years yesterday.

Even the Chinese version of Google has broadened access to information about Tiananmen that had been censored.

Previously, someone searching on proscribed websites for information about the 1989 massacre against pro-democracy students would receive the following message: “The server had to unexpectedly shut down the connection”.

Now, the word Tiananmen in the Google search field offers up photographs of “Tank Man”, the solitary protester who stood in front of Chinese tanks and became a symbol of the student protest.

Normally, China automatically censors sensitive information on the Chinese internet. In Jan 2006 Google agreed to a programme of self-censorship for its mainland search engine and removed information on the Tiananmen June 4 events.

China has two versions of Google: one in English and one in Chinese. On the latter, articles were still mostly censored but video footage was not.

Foreign news websites are normally not censored but certain articles are blocked automatically via a keyword search, including Tibet and democracy.

The same goes for Wikipedia, the internet encyclopaedia, whose article on Tiananmen was censored until recently and was accessible yesterday.

The recent opening of news archives and images on the 1989 events is all the more surprising given that the government has clamped down on the press and access to internet information this year; this month the government reminded internauts that publishing videos that could trigger social unrest was illegal.

As the 20th anniversary of the massacre approaches, dissidents have been systematically put under house arrest and forbidden to speak to the press. Any attempt to commemorate the victims has been hushed by local media which have been quiet on the anniversary. Up until now, silence on the massacre – called “six four” or “the June fourth incident” in China – has been the official stance.

Government officials have ignored pleas to open debate on the events and have seemed increasingly nervous as the commemorative date approaches.

An article published last month in the South China Morning Post, a daily newspaper based in Hong Kong, said Xi Jinping, China’s vice president, had been put in charge of preventing any social unrest related to the anniversary, including a clampdown on information via the internet. Journalists, university researchers and media analysts said they could not explain why previously censored information was now visible so easily to the public.

“I am very surprised to hear some video and news archives are now available,” said a Hong Kong-based expert on democracy in China who asked not to be named. “Maybe the government wants to open the debate, though this seems unlikely.

“At this point anything seems possible.”

A media analyst based in Beijing said the government possibly wants to guide some of the reporting on the issue. “There is no way the government can stop the flood of reporting, which is ready to come out on Tiananmen,” he said. “Maybe they would like a footnote saying times have changed?”

Other search engines and normally censored websites have not changed their policy. A search for Tiananmen on Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, proved unsuccessful. There were few responses, most of which were censored. Videos on YouTube or Daily Motion remained inaccessible.

“Though there does seem to be a change in policy, it is too early at this stage to give an answer as to why. We can only note this as an interesting incident,” the Hong Kong-based expert said. Google did not reply to questions from The National.

* The National