/'_/\ /'_/| | \ `\ | | | ______ | `\ `\ | | | ______ /'______/\ | |\ `\ `| | | /______/\ | ___ \/| | | |\ `\| | | | ___ \ \ | /'/ \_|/ | | | `\ | | | | | \ \/| | | | __ |_|/' `\__|/' | | | | | | | | \__/_/| | | |__| | | | \/___| |/ China News Digest | |/__/ |/ \_______/(InfoBase June 4 Collection)|_______/ May 1, 1993 **The CND InfoBase Project collects, among other China-related information, materials and/or bibliographical reference to matericals about the Beijing Massacre on June 4, 1989. Please refer to the trailer for more information. No. Subject june4-89.04t # of Lines --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Troops attack in Beijing Protesters, soldiers are .......156 2. HEADLINE: 'Censored by violence' In some places, letters to the editor are lethal ...........................................................97 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. HEADLINE: Troops attack in Beijing Protesters, soldiers are .......156 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BYLINE: By Uli Schmetzer and Ronald E. Yates, Chicago Tribune SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1989, Sunday, NATIONAL EDITION DATELINE: BEIJING KEYWORDS: CHINA; RIGHTS; PROTEST; MILITARY; GOVERNMENT; SHOOTING; DEATH; VIOLENCE Chinese troops launched a fierce assault on Tiananmen Square early Sunday, with armored personnel carriers crashing through barricades and soldiers firing weapons to disperse pro-democracy crowds, witnesses said. The Associated Press reported that thousands of troops armed with rifles marched up the east side of the vast square, which has been occupied by protesters for three weeks. Students threw bottles and other objects at them, while troops beat those who obstructed their path with sticks. Another group of more than 1,000 troops gained a foothold on the southwest corner of the vast square, while throngs of students and supporters tried to block their movement. At least one soldier was killed east of the square when he was run over by a military tank, the AP reported. There were reports that Chinese troops shot to death at least eight demonstrators while trying to enter Beijing to crush the antigovernment demonstrations, but those reports could not be immediately confirmed. Hours earlier, Chinese troops had fired into the air to disperse protesters in the first use of gunfire during the escalating confrontation between government forces and pro-democracy demonstrators. The shots were fired above a crowd that had gathered outside Beijing's Minsu Hotel, which is often used by Western tourists. A witness said the ammunition appeared to be a type of tracer bullet that lighted up the early morning sky in arcs over the heads of the Beijing residents who had closed in on troops at or near the hotel, which is about four miles east of Tiananmen Square. "The trees looked as if they were on fire" in the glow of the bullets, the witness said. Before the gunshots began, he said, two soldiers were beaten unconscious by members of the crowd. The hotel where the clash occurred is near the headquarters of the government-run radio and television stations, which made no mention of the violence. The Associated Press quoted witnesses as saying that one person was killed and five were wounded in the confrontation, but that report could not be confirmed. The incident followed Chinese troops' first use of clubs and tear gas on protesters. That violence erupted Saturday near the Communist Party headquarters at Zhongnanhai, a few hundred yards from Tiananmen Square, which the students have occupied since May 13. Before the assualt on the square Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets throughout the capital early Sunday in an attempt to block military trucks carrying troops to the square. At one spot about four miles west of the square, near the Jianguomenwai overpass on a main road in the city, a convoy of 70 to 90 military trucks was brought to a halt by a crowd of several thousand people blocking the road. The soldiers in those trucks looked bewildered as the crowd thronged around them, rocking their trucks and occasionally climbing into the vehicles. Those troops, who sat looking at the scene with their helmets off, appeared to be unarmed. In the earlier eruption of violence Saturday, witnesses said paramilitary troops charged a crowd gathered around a bus. On the roof of the bus, students exhibited two rifles dropped by retreating troops in their aborted assault on the square. In order to retrieve the guns, the troops fired about 20 tear gas rounds to disperse the crowd. "They've never used tear gas against the people of China before," said a stunned Chinese businessman. His shock was amplified later when other troops behind the Great Hall of the People grabbed individual protesters and clubbed them in full view of thousands of howling onlookers. "They are beating the students . . . it is just awful," said one onlooker. "I think the government has now lost the people's heart forever." The victims of the beatings, with blood streaming down their faces, were peddled off to hospitals on the flatbeds of tricycles. The troops crouched down on the asphalt pavement behind the Great Hall under a scorching sun, and were surrounded by angry onlookers who shouted, "Don't bloody the people." Early Sunday, student leaders in the square had attempted to defuse the potentially explosive situation by agreeing to allow several hundred troops to retreat unimpeded into the Great Hall of the People. The troops, who had been bottled up behind hall for hours while angry mobs of Chinese workers harrangued them, were part of the force that earlier had fired tear gas at the demonstrators and had beaten at least a dozen with wooden clubs and belts. It was the first violence in more than seven weeks of China's student -led pro-democracy movement and it was the first use of tear gas against the Chinese people since this nation was founded in 1949. Beijing was abuzz over the re-emergence of Qin Ji Wei, China's defense minister. Qin had been thought to be under house arrest for refusing to allow the military to move against the demonstrators. He was shown on state-run television speaking to soldiers who had taken part in an abortive attempt in the early hours of Saturday to retake the huge square. Qin's reappearnce led many diplomats in Beijing to speculate that China's moderates in the political hierarchy, led by Zhao Ziyang, had worked out a deal with the hardliners, led by Premier Li Peng. Qin, they speculated, may have allowed the use of troops to dislodge the students from the square in return for guarantees that Zhao and other moderates would not be purged. As news of Saturday's attack spread, crowds began to converge on the center of Beijing until by Saturday evening some 300,000 jammed the world's largest public square in support of the students. "Our government is very bad," a Chinese worker told a reporter. "You must tell the world what these evil men are doing to our people." While government-controlled broadcasts did not mention the abortive attempt to clear the square Saturday, newsreaders reiterated an official statement that blamed a group of Chinese pro-democracy activists living in New York for "a planned plot against the state." The broadcasts identified the four as Hu Ping, Chen Yun, Wang Binzhang and Tang Guangzhong. Their aim was to "deny the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist system." China's government often blames "foreign interference" as the root of domestic problems. The statement said the four belonged to the reactionary China Democratic League organization and the China Spring group, both active in New York. GRAPHIC: PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Protesters link themselves together Saturday in Beijing in an attempt to keep angry crowds from chasing a group of soldiers who had attacked students with tear gas and truncheons. PHOTO: AP Laserphoto. Chinese students put together this display of equipment dropped by retreating troops in their aborted assault on Tiananmen Square early Saturday. Later, armored personnel carriers and thousands of troops moved into the square in a new attempt to crush the protest. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. HEADLINE: 'Censored by violence' In some places, letters to the editor are lethal ...........................................................97 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- BYLINE: Eleanor Randolph, (copyright) 1989, Washington Post Writers Group SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1989, Sunday, FINAL EDITION DATELINE: WASHINGTON KEYWORDS: CHINA; PROTEST; MEDIA; ANALYSIS; GROUP; VIOLENCE From our fat-cat status in the world, the American news establishment sometimes forgets that its primary role is not to make money but to tell the truth. Only when we see what is happening in places like China, South Africa, Chile or Colombia do we recall that the yearning to publish is a primal human need. It also can provoke more than an angry phone call. "Whenever I see a motorcycle, I think that the time has finally come," a journalist in Bogota told Mark A. Uhlig of the New York Times recently. Colombian killers, whose targets include anyone who speaks out against their lucrative drug business, charge as little as $10 for silencing forever a member of the media. These ultimate censors usually ride motorcycles. The Committee to Protect Journalists, whose honorary chairman is Walter Cronkite and whose working chairman is First Amendment lawyer James Goodale, issues a report every year on the number of journalists worldwide who have been "censored by violence." In 1988, "at least" 24 journalists were killed, some covering wars but others simply writing about death squads or drugs or greed in their communities. "More than" 800 incidents - arrests, fines, assaults, expulsions - have occurred in more than 85 countries, the committee said. In the global war of words, some disgruntled readers respond with stronger weapons. Some of these reporters have been foreign correspondents, journalists from other countries who get caught in the crossfire in Afghanistan or the Philippines, but most are people who were born in and who live in the community where they publish. Unlike the foreign correspondents with their Banana Republic shirts and their electronic umbilical cords to offices in New York, Tokyo and London, these members of the press don't have access to escape helicopters. All of which brings us to the "days of awe," as Dan Rather has called the events in China since the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev. It is possible that one of the reasons Chinese students in Beijing haven't been trucked off to agricultural camps at this writing is that the cameras of CBS News and the BBC and CNN have been there. The world is watching electronically, and the videocameras, as long as they are running and transmitting their contents abroad, are providing some hope of protection against tanks. But someday soon, barring the violence that feeds and excites our global news machine, viewers in the United States and elsewhere will begin to tire of the story from Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Already Dan has come home. If the revolution reaches a long stalemate, television crews will begin packing. Media headquarters will begin to call home their "extras." As the media crowd dwindles, the dangers increase for those who stay. For foreign reporters, the Chinese have not always been as hospitable as they have been in recent weeks. In 1988, for example, they used cattle prods against two British journalists who were confined to their hotel in Kashgar by the police. Their hotel-arrest apparently came about when they purchased airline tickets without official approval. Moreover, China still echoes with the brief experiment with freedom in the 1950s when Chairman Mao said, "Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend." Soon after the dissenters blossomed, Mao declared them weeds and plucked them out of his intellectual garden. Chinese journalists, some of whom have enjoyed more freedom in recent years, have protested in the streets this month. Some of those who speak English have been on American television: Two appearing on "Nightline" recently gave strong views about how the government should comport itself. Sidney Jones, executive director of a group called Asia Watch that monitors civil and political liberties in the area, said last week after returning from the streets of Beijing that Chinese journalists are nervous. "They think that they would be among the first people cracked down on once the hard-liners come in," Jones said. But she also said that there are signs of hope from many of the young journalists whose hero is Liu Bin Yan, the reporter from the Chinese Daily who wrote a famous story about corruption in a regional government. The story was called "People or Monsters?" and it provoked support from readers, including some who sent their lifetime savings in the mail. Expelled from the Communist Party and denounced by the government, he has become a cult hero. Last year the government allowed Liu Bin Yan and his wife to come to the United States, where he has been studying at Harvard. Liu, 62, has said he is uncertain whether he will return to China. To watch these Chinese journalists at work is to remember what freedom of the press is all about. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Executive Editor: Bing Wen in Ottawa, Canada | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest (CND) InfoBase covers the following areas: | | History : WWII, Cultural Revolution, June 4, Olympics | | Service : visa/PR, PRC-doc, tax, insurance, travel/living | | Academics : job, conference/workshop, societies, projects | | Other : org intro, book review, community activities | | ------ * ------ * ------ | | To contribute, please send to CND-IB@CND.ORG | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+