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- <text id=89TT2352>
- <title>
- Sep. 11, 1989: World Notes:China
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- Sep. 11, 1989 The Lonely War:Drugs
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 51
- World Notes
- CHINA
- Executions In Secret
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Since last June's crackdown on the student democracy
- movement, China has announced that it has put to death several
- dozen "counterrevolutionaries." The actual total may be much
- higher. In a telex to Chinese Premier Li Peng last week, Amnesty
- International called for an end to continuing secret executions
- that it termed "judicial killing." The human rights organization
- said it had evidence that the Chinese government had decided to
- shoot all prisoners charged with "most serious crimes" but to
- announce only enough deaths to intimidate would-be dissidents.
- </p>
- <p> In its new research report on the suppression of the
- protests by the People's Liberation Army, Amnesty labeled the
- official government toll of 200 deaths a "gross underestimate."
- Citing reports from witnesses, Amnesty claimed that soldiers
- firing indiscriminately into crowds killed at least 1,000
- civilians in Beijing and 300 in Chengdu. A government spokesman
- in Beijing said the charges were "entirely ungrounded" and that
- the demonstrators had used "terrorist means." Chinese embassies
- abroad released a grainy video presenting the official version
- with a narrator claiming that no one was killed in Tiananmen
- Square.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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