Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!daemon Original-To: utchinese@csri.utoronto.ca Subject: Feb. 22 (II), News Digest Sender: From: chi@VLSI.WATERLOO.EDU Message-ID: <90Feb23.142411est.57358@ugw.utcs.utoronto.ca> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 90 14:24:01 EST Newsgroups: ut.chinese Distribution: ut Sender: list-admin@csri.toronto.edu Approved: nobody@csri.toronto.edu | +---------I __L__ ___- i \ ------I +----+----+ | ___\_\_ | \./ | | -----+- | | | | | __ \/ | --+-- |--- | |---| | I----+----I | I__J/\ | __|__ | | | |---| | | | _____ \ | /| \ | | | L__-| | I I---------J / J \/ | | V | _/ * C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t * (News General) -- Feb. 22 (II), 1990 Table of Contents # of Lines 1. (US) Chinese Students Organize Visiting Delegation .................... 61 2. US State Department Criticizes China Government -- Massacre ........... 91 3. China Law School President Forced to Resign ........................... 82 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. (US) Chinese Students Organize Visiting Delegation ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jian Ding" BY: LOCKE, MICHELLE ; Associated Press Writer Source: AMHERST, Mass. (AP) February 21, 1990 An organizer hopes to lead the first announced delegation of Chinese students to return home since the killing of scores of people in Tiananmen Square. "I believe that this is the right cause. We have to open the door to interaction. Without interaction we can do nothing with the movement back home," said Matthew Huang, the leader of the proposed delegation by the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in the United States. The federation recently voted to seek permission for a visiting delegation. Letters have been sent to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., but there has been no response so far. Huang, a student at the University of Massachusetts, said it's possible the government will refuse to allow the students to return. "We do want to go back and we think someone should take the risk," said Shen Tong, one of the leaders in the pro-democracy movement in Beijing who eluded capture and is now studying at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. He said Wednesday he was willing to take that risk. "This kind of open attitude can basically challenge the Chinese government's closed-door policy," he said. "It's also for the American government. We want to show the Bush administration we didn't give up our struggle." The administration, asserting that it is important to maintain a dialogue with China to encourage liberalization, last month vetoed a bill protecting Chinese students against deportation. Bush has twice sent high-level emissaries to China since last summer's bloody suppression. A statement by the student federation said reasons for its visit include investigating what happened to those killed when soldiers moved into Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, as well as seeing "the real China, normal or not." Huang, a 27-year-old biology student, said he's scared about what may happen on a trip home. "We will try our best to go back and maybe we will face some danger," Huang said. "One thing is for certain is we won't trade our principles.' Officials at the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not return a telephone call on Wednesday. The crackdown of the pro-democracy movement was followed by an outcry by Chinese students studying in the United States. Many were colleagues of the students leading the movement in China. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2. US State Department Criticizes China Government -- Massacre ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jian Ding" BY: ANDERSON, JIM Source: WASHINGTON (UPI) February 21, 1990 The State Department's annual report on human rights sharply criticized the Chinese government Wednesday for the "massa- cre" of hundreds and possibly thousands of pro-democracy pro- testers in Tiananmen Square and the later execution of at least 20 more pro-Democracy activists. The Chinese government has denied the executions and has never officially acknowledged any widespread killings occurred when tanks and troops were called in to crush the pro- democracy movement last June. The harsh words by the State Department Human Rights bureau, in its annual "Country Reports," was in direct con- trast to the much milder language used by the Bush administration in recent comments on the situation in China. "The human rights climate in China deterioriated dramatically in 1989," the State Department report concluded. The account, based on reports from U.S. diplomats and other sources, said "at least several hundred, and possibly thousands, of people were killed in Beijing on June 3-4." "The Beijing massacre," the report said, "was followed by a drastic, country-wide crackdown on participants, support- ers, and sympathizers. Thousands were arrested and about a score are known to have been executed following trials which fell far short of international standards." The State Department placed the blame for the killings squarely at the feet of the Chinese leadership: "Credible evidence indicates that the leadership deliberately ordered the use of lethal force to suppress peaceful demonstra- tions. The excessive force employed resulted in the deaths of many unarmed civilians." Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell said the report "is a devastating indictment of human rights in China. It is an equally devastating indictment of the pol- icies of the Bush administration toward China." Mitchell said the report shows that China pursues a policy of violating the rights of its citizens "in a way that should shock the conscience of the world." "It does shock the conscience of Americans. Unfortunately, it does not shock the executive branch of the American govern- ment," Mitchell said. White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater insisted there was "no inconsistency" between the report's findings and Bush's decision to try to keep open lines of diplomatic communi- cation between Washington and Beijing. And at the House Foreign Affairs Committee's human rights subcommittee, members praised the candid nature of the report by Richard Schifter, assistant secretary of states for human rights, but criticized the administration's position on China. Subcommittee Chairman Gus Yatron, D-Pa., told Schifter that while the report "pulls no punches," that current U.S. policy toward China and also toward Iraq "leaves the impression that the United States has placed human rights on the back burner of American foreign policy." And Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said, "Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the report are its best pages, the report on China, because the human rights report on China, which I commend and applaud, reflect a schizophrenic approach on the part of this amdinistration to China." But Schifter said that U.S. human rights goals "are not advanced by cutting all ties" with countries that violate human rights. - Elsewhere, the report said 1989 "may well go down in history books as a watershed year regarding the worldwide cause of human rights," particularly in Eastern Europe. Regarding the Soviet Union, the report commented, "Though reformers strengthened their hold on the top echelon of the Soviet government, 'new thinking' has failed to penetrate many parts of the Soviet bureaucracy." ... ... ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. China Law School President Forced to Resign ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jian Ding" BY: LUBMAN, SARAH Source: BEIJING (UPI) February 21, 1990 The president of a leading law school was forced to resign for being overly sympathetic to his students during last spring's protest movement, Chinese and Western sources said Wednesday. Jiang Ping, the liberal president of China Politics and Law University in Beijing, was ordered to resign last week. Jiang had originally expressed a wish to quit his post last summer but was persuaded by his students to stay on, the sources said. Conservative ideologues criticized Jiang, 60, for being too lenient with many students who demonstrated in last spring's massive pro-democracy protests, the sources said. Politics and Law University, one of five law schools formed in the 1950s under the Ministry of Justice, played a leading role in the student-led pro-democracy movement. At the height of the protests, young teachers from Poli- tics and Law staged a hunger strike in front of Zhong- nanhai, China's leadership compound. Several teachers from the university were arrested during the crackdown that followed the army's bloody suppression of the protests, and some previously active students say they still undergo occasional police interrogations. Jiang was told to step down by Ministry of Justice officials, but sources said the officials apparently were pressured from higher authorities, possibly the Communist Party's Political and Legal Leading Group headed by ruling Polit- buro member Qiao Shi. The Political and Legal Group has no direct authority over the Ministry of Justice, which is supervised by the State Coun- cil, China's Cabinet. But the party's legal group counts Jus- tice Minister Cai Cheng among its seven members. Students at Politics and Law say they hold Jiang in high regard for trying to protect them during continuing investiga- tions in connection with the protests. Sources said authorities appeared to have timed Jiang's ouster to coincide with the last week of the lunar New Year's academic break so as to avoid campus unrest. "They're being careful about Jiang Ping," said a foreign legal expert. "They don't want any problems with the students." Jiang, who has spoken in favor of legal reform, will retain his positions as standing committee member of the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp Parliament, and co-chairman of the NPC's legislative affairs commission. He will also continue to teach graduate and undergraduate classes at Politics and Law, sources said. Jiang, a Communist Party member educated in Moscow, shared the fate of hundreds of thousands of Chinese intellectuals in the late 1950s. Branded a "rightist" in 1957, he spent two years in a labor camp, where he lost a leg. He was fully rehabilitated in 1979 and was later appointed president of Politics and Law University, formerly known as the Beijing Institute of Political Science and Law. Sources say the university has not yet replaced Jiang and the search for a suitable president will probably take "several months." "They can't find the appropriate person. They need someone acceptable to the Ministry of Justice," said a source, who asked not to be identified. A university spokesman contacted by telephone said exe- cutive vice president Chen Guangzhong is temporarily over- seeing day-to-day campus administration. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest Subscription: (Xinmeng Liao) xliao@ccm.umanitoba.ca | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | China News Digest Executive Editor: (Bo Chi) chi@vlsi.uwaterloo.edu | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Thu Feb 22 14:48:08 EST 1990