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Beijing - 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 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, died when the Army crushed the democracy movement on June 4, 1989.
Li Zhaojun, deputy editor-in-chief of the Chengdu Evening News and two other members of the tabloid's editorial office had been dismissed, the source said.
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."
Authorities interrogated newspaper staff to find out how the ad slipped past censors.
- REUTERS
