The following post relating to the 1989 Tiananmen protests by Zhang Qianye (张倩烨), a reporter with the Hong Kong newsmagazine Yazhou Zhoukan (亚洲周刊), was deleted from Sina Weibo sometime before 12:05pm Hong Kong time today, April 26, 2012. It was posted yesterday, April 25. Zhang Qianye currently has just over 7,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre].
The post from Zhang Qianye shares an image of the front page of the People’s Daily on April 26, 1989, with its lead official Party editorial, “We Must Take a Clear-Cut Stand in Opposing Disorder” (必须旗帜鲜明地反对动乱).
The hard-line editorial, published in the midst of pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing that year, is notorious in the eyes of many for having pushed the government into a position of direct opposition to protesting students. One of the goals of hunger strikes by students in May 1989 was to force a retraction or revision of the April 26 editorial and its position.
Let us remember this “tomorrow” in our history, for the sake of all of our future tomorrows.
The original Chinese post by Zhang Qianye follows:
记住这个历史上的“明天”,是为了我们的每一个明天。
NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.