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We Hope You Can Read This in China

Remembering the crackdown at Tiananmen Square

by
Marc Tracy
June 05, 2012
The iconic 'Tank Man' near Tiananmen Square in June 1989.(Jeffrey Widener/AP/NYT Lens)
The iconic 'Tank Man' near Tiananmen Square in June 1989.(Jeffrey Widener/AP/NYT Lens)

A reader in China once emailed a Tablet Magazine staffer to inform him that the magazine was not accessible there, presumably due to China’s formidable Internet suppression and censorship apparatus frequently referred to as the Great Firewall. It turns out that’s probably not true—if you’re in China, you probably can read us. But in trying to figure out what might have gotten us blacklisted, we found that the explosive phrase “Tiananmen Square” appears several times in our digital pages. In addition to being a geographic landmark in Beijing, this is of course shorthand for the crackdown on a dissident movement that culminated in the military massacre that killed hundreds if not thousands of civilians. That crackdown occurred 23 years ago yesterday (yes, missed the exact date, sorry).

So, ban this.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.