A never ending battle of wits,
continues all the time on internet, between China's archaic
censorship and ingenious netizens, who always manage to stay one step
ahead of the censors and convey messages, which get banned later, on
China's Sina Weibo, a twitter like message service. This battle has
come to forefront again as Chinese netizens found ways to circumvent
Chinese censors to spread their feelings and messages around, with
their clever use of tweets and messages to express their feelings
about the day of remembrance of the crushing of democracy
demonstrations in Beijing by the army on June 4, exactly 24 years
back.
On this very day in 1989, student-led
popular demonstrations in Beijing which took place in the spring of
1989, were forcibly suppressed by hardline leaders who ordered the
military to enforce martial law in the country's capital. The
crackdown that initiated on June 3–4 became known as the Tiananmen
Square Massacre as troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted
thousands of casualties on unarmed civilians trying to block the
military’s advance on Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing,
which student demonstrators had occupied for seven weeks. The scale
of military mobilization and the resulting bloodshed were
unprecedented in the history of Beijing, a city with a rich tradition
of popular protests in the 20th century. The Chinese government had
condemned the protests as a "counterrevolutionary riot",
and has prohibited all forms of discussion or remembrance of the
events within China. Even the memoirs of leaders who supported the
crackdown are banned.
Expecting, that there would be wide
spread transfer of messages by Chinese netizens, who would like
everyone to remember this sad anniversary day, Chinese censors had
banned use of words like ‘Today,’ ‘Tonight,’ “Today is June
4,″ “#June4,”: 'in memory of' (& variants).' For several
hours on morning of June 4th, one reference had survived
on Weibo (Chinese twitter), that of the number 64, which obviously
meant 4th of June. In the early morning it was the 16th
most searched term on weibo, rising by midmorning to the 14th; then
it was suddenly gone. Any message on weibo with these words met with
a response that said: “According to relevant laws, statutes and
policies,” the results of the search “cannot be shown.”
There were some even more ingenious
attempts to deceive the censors. Most of the world's media had
published a photograph in 1989 of a man stopping a long line of tanks
as the army crushed democracy demonstrations in Beijing in June 1989.
This famed photograph is now considered as a symbol of Tiananmen
square massacre. A photo of a Lego man stopping a line a Lego tanks
was published by China’s Netease Web site as a part of a slideshow
to mark Children’s Day on June 1. Buzzfeed reported following
comments from the readers about the image: “You are a brave
editor”; “A great way to let our children remember our history”;
and, “He was not run over by the tank that day. His name is Wang
Weilin. No one knows what happened to him. They ‘evaporated’
him.” The photo of Lego man did survive for few days. By the end
of the day on 4th June, the photo was removed from the
slideshow, but not before becoming a minor Internet sensation
The Global Times, a newspaper belonging
to the Communist Party flagship People’s Daily, published an
article giving a sermon and strongly defending Internet censorship.
It cited a recent decision by Germany’s constitutional court
against Google as evidence that “Many countries are trying to
regulate their Internet services.” The article said further: “Some
claim that any regulation of the Internet is an anti-democratic
effort. This deceptive voice has gained support from Western public
opinion, which makes China’s regulation of the Internet encounter
more resistance than in other countries. People already understand
that free speech can not go against social order. Internet regulation
is not only an embodiment of the government’s will, but is also
laid on the foundation of the public interest. Internet regulation
has to be carried out until those spreading adverse remarks fear the
strength of the public interest.”
Some words, which could no way be
connected with 4th June were also banned. No one could
explain why ‘Big Yellow Duck’ was banned till a photograph
appeared showing 4 yellow coloured plastic ducks sitting in the
Tiananmen square instead of 4 tanks from the original famed
photograph. Few weeks back, a single big and yellow plastic duck was
found floating in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong and drew excited
attention there and in mainland China. The ducks in this photograph
were a reference to Hong Kong, where a mass demonstration was
planned on this day.
China's internet is censored by
GreatFire.org (the name refers to the Great Firewall, China’s very
large and sophisticated system of Internet censorship) and any
posting of banned words and photographs results in a message that
says “cached by GreatFire.org.” This entire episode only shows
how difficult it is to control the internet and even China’s very
large and sophisticated system of Internet censorship is not able to
totally control the innovative, creativity of Chinese netizens. My
hats off to them.
6th June 2013
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