Chengdu Evening News fired three of it’s editorial staff after they accidentally mentioned Tiananmen Square.

On the 18th anniversary of the crackdown 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.”

The mention was in an ad, so it was funded by a private party and not the paper itself. But even so, the Chinese government is pretty serious about their “nothing to see here” attitude, and you have to wonder how something like that could slide past the omnipresent censors.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said Wednesday a young female clerk allowed the tribute to be published because she had never heard of the [Tiananmen Square] crackdown.

Full text of the Reuters article here