Bo Chi <chi@vlsi> (02/08/91)
* C h i n a N e w s D i g e s t *
(News General)
February 8, 1991
Table of Contents # of Lines
News Briefs ................................................................16
1. Soviet Military Leader Accused Yeltsin of Sedition ......................79
2. China Says U.S. Human Rights Report Unacceptable ........................54
3. Taiwan Repatriates Illegal Immigrants ...................................51
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News Briefs ................................................................16
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From: Wu, Fang < int3fwu@uclamvs >
Source: AP, 2/7/91
- Iraq said about 150 people, including 35 children, were killed by an
allied air raid on the southern city of Nassariyah.
- Special Israeli Cabinet committee on economy orders reopening of Israel"s
schools, health care centers, government offices and factories.
- The U.S. deficit in trade with China soared in the first nine months of
last year to $7.4 billion, compared with $4 billion in the same period in
1989, the U.S. International Trade Commission reported Wednesday.
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1. Soviet Military Leader Accused Yeltsin of Sedition ......................79
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From: Zuofeng Li < zuofeng@pollux.wustl.edu >
Source: UPI, Feb. 7, 1991
By JAMES ROSEN
MOSCOW -- President Mikhail Gorbachev's senior military aide Thursday accused
Russian Federation leader Boris Yeltsin of sedition and said he wants to
``trample the Soviet Constitution underfoot.''
Yeltsin, however, continued his challenge to Gorbachev's rule. The Russian
Parliament, chaired by Yeltsin, approved a measure asking the giant republic's
residents to create an executive presidency as part of the March 17 nationwide
referendum on the future shape of the Soviet Union.
The new post would be filled by direct election and could give Yeltsin the
popular mandate Gorbachev lacks.
The Russian legislature also set up a commission to investigate why two rooms
directly above Yeltsin's office in the Russian government headquarters
contained eavesdropping equipment. Several deputies and officials entered the
rooms Wednesday evening after a newspaper reported that the KGB had bugged
Yeltsin.
In separate action, the Russian Parliament passed a resolution charging Leonid
Kravchenko, the head of Soviet television, with denying Yeltsin access to the
country's main channel.
Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, Gorbachev's personal military adviser, said that
Yeltsin and the radical forces he leads ``have been waging an open struggle''
against Gorbachev and the Soviet legislature since the end of last year.
``They joined hands with separatist forces in the Baltic,'' Akhromeyev told
the Sovetskaya Rossiya newspaper. ``The president of the largest union
republic (Yeltsin) openly opposes the policy pursued by the Soviet president
and approved by the U.S.S.R. Congress of People's Deputies.''
Yeltsin has strongly criticized Gorbachev's recent crackdown in the Baltic
republics. He flew to Tallinn and signed a treaty of solidarity with Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania on Jan. 14, the day after a Soviet military raid in
Vilnius left 14 people dead.
In the strongest attack on Yeltsin made to date by a Gorbachev aide,
Akhromeyev accused him of trying to break up the Soviet Union.
``The desire to trample the Soviet Constitution underfoot is characteristic
of Yeltsin's actions,'' the marshal said. ``He acts as if there were no
constitution at all.''
But the Russian Parliament voted to include in next month's referendum a
question asking its citizens: ``Do you find it necessary to introduce the post
of president of the Russian Federation to be chosen as a result of general
elections?''
Such a post could significantly expand the power base of Yeltsin, who has made
a remarkable political comeback since Gorbachev fired him in late 1987 as
Moscow Communist Party boss.
The new Russian Parliament chose Yeltsin as its chairman last May, making him
effective president of the dominant republic. Creation of a full-fledged
presidency would boost his power, especially if he was confirmed in a popular
election.
The U.S.S.R. Congress of People's Deputies created an executive presidency for
the whole country last March and named Gorbachev to the post. The Soviet
leader barely defeated a bid to make him stand for direct election.
In a separate attack on a progressive political figure, Sovetskaya Rossiya
accused former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze on Thursday of harming
Soviet interests in an accord struck last year with the United States on the
Bering Strait.
The conservative newspaper said Shevardnadze pursued ``secret policies'' and
caused ``territorial and economic'' losses for the Soviet Union when he signed
the June 1, 1990, accord that redrew the 1,600-mile boundary between Alaska
and the Soviet Far East in the Bering Sea.
In his stunning Dec. 20 resignation announcement, Shevardnadze warned that
conservative forces were pushing the country back toward totalitarian rule.
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2. China Says U.S. Human Rights Report Unacceptable ........................54
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From: Zuofeng Li < zuofeng@pollux.wustl.edu >
Source: UPI, Fen. 7, 1991
By DAVID R. SCHWEISBERG
BEIJING -- China denounced the State Department's latest human rights report
as ``entirely unacceptable'' Thursday and claimed the report's charges of
continued repression in China were based on rumor, prejudice and ignorance.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Li Zhaoxing, at a news briefing, said the
annual report is ``an unwarranted criticism of and an unscrupulous
interference in the internal affairs of many countries on the pretext of human
rights.''
The State Department report on China for the year 1990, released last week,
cited continued human rights abuses since the June 1989 crackdown on the pro-
democracy movement, including detention without trial of large numbers of
protest activists.
The report also cited suppression of opposition movements in Tibet and among
Muslims in western Xinjiang Province, along with continued harassment and
arrest of religious figures, especially Catholic clergymen who run so-called
underground churches.
``The human rights report ... cites false rumors to distort and attack China
over domestic affairs, and this is entirely unacceptable,'' Li said in a
statement.
``This can only testify to the prejudice of the report's drafters and their
ignorance about China,'' he said.
Li called ``particularly ridiculous'' the report's citing of repression under
the ``one-child'' population control policy and of persistent reports that
Chinese were forced to contribute money and labor toward last fall's Beijing
Asian Games.
He then delivered a rambling off-the-cuff diatribe against foreign criticism
of China's human rights record, calling Western policy on human rights a
``farce.''
Western nations have most recently expressed concern about nearly three dozen
trials held since December of democracy movement activists. The proceedings
continued this week and are expected to be wrapped up this month, perhaps by
next week.
The trials have been closed to foreign observers and have been criticized as
sham hearings with preordained verdicts. The London human rights group Amnesty
International issued a report Tuesday blasting the trials as unfair.
China's propaganda agencies have trumpeted the sentences handed down so far
as lenient, with the heaviest, a seven-year term, given to veteran human
rights activist Ren Wanding.
But Western diplomats have pointed out that despite the relative leniency by
Chinese standards, many activists have been sent to prison for political
crimes -- and some simply for publicly criticizing the government or senior
Chinese leaders.
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3. Taiwan Repatriates Illegal Mainland Chinese Immigrants ..................51
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From: Zuofeng Li < zuofeng@pollux.wustl.edu >
Source: UPI, Feb. 5, 1991
By JEFF HOFFMAN
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan conducted a mass repatriation of illegal mainland
Chinese immigrants Tuesday over protests from Beijing and despite fears of a
repeat of seaborne accidents that killed 46 mainlanders last summer.
Shortly before 10 a.m. Taiwan naval authorities put 190 persons aboard three
fishing boats off the Nationalist-held island of Matsu. The boats were
immediately escorted by mainland vessels to Fujian province's Mawei island.
Seventy mainlanders were returned to China on Monday.
According to Taiwan's Red Cross Society, both repatriations were carried out
safely and without incident.
On Monday officials at China's State Council criticized the move, demanding
that Taiwan allow mainland representatives on Matsu to supervise the process,
while Qu Zhe, Red Cross deputy secretary general, said responsibility for the
safety of the deportee would be Taiwan's problem.
Qu called on Taiwan to abide by a bilateral agreement signed in October
through which the Taiwan and mainland Red Cross organizations have jointly
supervised the repatriation of relatively small groups of mainland illegal.
The agreement came after 46 mainlanders died in two separate incidents in July
and August while being returned home.
On Tuesday a government watchdog agency report said the Taiwan navy should
take half of the blame for a collision between one of its patrol boats and a
mainland fishing boat Aug. 13, which caused the drowning of 21 people.
Taiwan officials say mass repatriations are necessary because of overcrowding
in four detention centers for mainland illegal and that they are acting out
of humanitarian considerations. The military said Monday it would send home
the more than 700 mainlanders remaining in custody in four to five groups
before the start of Chinese New Year next Friday.
Chen Chang-wen, secretary general of Taiwan's Red Cross, said his organization
will not oversee mass repatriation efforts in the next week, as the military
has taken charge of the process. He said future deportations would be
conducted according to the terms of the Taiwan-China agreement.
A Red Cross official, speaking anonymously, said the Red Cross disagrees with
the government's mass deportation policy, which it says compromises safety,
but that the organization would not openly take issue with the government.
A growing number of mainlanders from impoverished areas have entered Taiwan
illegally in recent years seeking work.
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