Beijing paper in hot water for 1989 crackdown photo -report

by Sanjay Jha | July 25, 2008 at 03:16 am

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The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the Tiananmen Square Massacre still haunts Chinese authorities. The incident in which Several hundred civilians were shot dead by the Chinese army during a bloody military operation to crush a democratic protest in Peking's (Beijing) Tiananmen Square. Tanks rumbled through the capital's streets late on 3 June as the army moved into the square from several directions, randomly firing on unarmed protesters.

Any discussion or even refernece of the tumult of 1989 is a political taboo in China, especially as Communist Party leaders seek to focus on hopes for the Beijing Olympic Games next month.

Chiese Government has never been comfortable with the event and even after 19 yrs on the subject is discussed in hush-hush. Now a newspaper has published a pictures of that event and they are most likely to face the music.

The Ming Pao newspaper reported on Friday that officials ordered the Beijing newspaper yanked from stalls and the report cut from the paper's website. Propaganda and press officials were also investigating the report, it said.

A popular Chinese newspaper could face punishment after printing a picture of casualties in the 1989 military crackdown on anti-government protests, a taboo subject.

The Beijing News, a Chinese-language tabloid widely read in the capital, published an interview with a Hong Kong-born American photographer who in the 1980s worked in China.

But the otherwise unthreatening story and selection of his photos on Wednesday included a small picture of injured men being carried on the back of a three-wheeled cycle -- apparently shot after the Communist Party crushed the 1989 pro-democracy movement centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The picture in the inside pages of the popular daily is titled "The Wounded."