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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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091189
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09118900.028
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1990-09-17
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WORLD, Page 51World NotesCHINAExecutions In Secret
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.
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.