Tiananmen Square ban for journalists

FOREIGN journalists were barred from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square yesterday as police fanned out across the vast plaza ahead of today’s 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Authorities blocked social networking and image-sharing websites, such as Twitter and Flickr, and confined dissidents to their homes or forced them to leave Beijing, as they ramped up efforts to prevent online discussions about or commemorations of those who died in the military assault on demonstrators on the night of June 3-4, 1989.

Dozens of uniformed and plainclothes police guarded entrances to Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing that was the epicentre of the student-led protests. Officers demanded identification and turned away those whose passports said they were journalists.