(CNN) -- Crowds gathered at the headquarters of a Chinese newspaper on Monday, in support of a rare protest by journalists against alleged government censorship. The journalists at the Southern Weekly paper, based in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, claim that an editorial calling for political reform was censored by and re-written as a tribute to Communist Party rule. Photos published by the South China Morning Post and circulated on China's most popular microblogging site Sina Weibo showed dozens of people gathering outside the paper's headquarters, some holding posters calling for press freedom. One journalist from Southern Media Group, which owns Southern Weekly, told CNN that colleagues joined the protest to express their outrage.
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Crowds gather in support of journalists' protest
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Move follows controversy over alleged censorship of editorial
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Call for reform said to be re-written as tribute to Communist Party rule
Online censors deleted all comments added to Southern Weekly's statement and searches for the four characters that make up @placeholder's Chinese name have been blocked from Weibo searches since Friday.