Today (June 4th) marks the 24th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre that resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries after the Chinese authorities violently brought an end to two months of student-led protests. Almost a quarter of a century on, the Communist government are still trying to control coverage of the internationally infamous incident.

Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo, who introduced strict new censorship rules last year to comply with government rules, have put in place more extreme measures than usual to restrict discussion about the anniversary. While phrases like 'Tiananmen incident' and 'June 4th' had previously been filtered, this year uses of words like 'today', 'tomorrow' and variations on the relevant dates have been banned. Even 'May 35th' - used in earlier years to bypass restrictions - is included in the strict clampdown.

However, activists and Weiboers have been using photographs and drawings to creatively sneak past the censors, at least temporarily. Recreations of the iconic 'Tank Man' photograph from 1989 have surfaced, with one Photoshopper replacing the army tanks with giant rubber ducks (referencing the inflatable duck that deflated in Hong Kong harbour recently). 'Big Yellow Ducks' has subsequently been added to the vocabulary blacklist. Another website posted a Lego version of the image, and another user an Angry Birds illustration of the well-known photo. 

While some have resorted to vague remarks to carefully express their sympathies (many of them, including one from film director Jia Zhanke, subsequently deleted), other prominent activists have simply chosen to remain silent for twenty-four hours to observe the anniversary. Others have suggested the strict censorship is only drawing more attention to the event and the government's restrictive censorship policies, with activist Hu Jia commenting "thanks to the role of Weibo, there are now more people than any other time in the past 24 years that have come to know and think about the incident."