DATE=5/25/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=CHINA-PROTEST END (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-262810
BYLINE=LETA HONG FINCHER
DATELINE=BEIJING
CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO:  Two nights of protest by students at Beijing 
University have ended, after campus officials agreed 
to hold a memorial service for a murdered student.  
The campus remains under unusually tight security.  
The protests came just a week and a half weeks before 
the anniversary of the 1989 crackdown against pro-
democracy activists at Tiananmen Square.  VOA's Leta 
Hong Fincher has this report from Beijing.

TEXT:  Beijing University officials quelled the 
protests on Thursday morning, by permitting students 
to hold a memorial service for nineteen year-old rape 
and murder victim Qiu Qingfeng.  Ms. Qiu's body was 
found last Saturday, but campus officials waited three 
days before releasing the information.  

Angry students staged two nights of protests to demand 
the right to mourn their classmate publicly, after the 
administration initially rejected calls for a memorial 
service.  Students also demanded stronger security 
measures, greater dialogue with university officials 
and greater freedom of expression.  

Thursday's memorial service was a partial concession 
to the students, but the event was strictly monitored 
by plainclothes police.  Students were not permitted 
to light candles or leave any offerings other than a 
single white paper flower provided by the official 
student assembly, which is organized by the Communist 
Party.  

The campus security bureau also posted notices 
announcing that one of the people who had openly 
criticized the Beijing University President Wednesday 
night had been detained.  The notice said the man was 
not a true Beijing University student, and had merely 
posed as a student.  It also said the man had been 
released, but warned students to report what it called 
"outsiders" to the authorities.

In a sign that some students remained dissatisfied, 
one of the notices had a message scrawled across it, 
saying "according to this logic, Mao Zedong should 
have been arrested as well."  Mao Zedong was the 
founder of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and 
Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party for almost 
three decades.  He had worked as a librarian on the 
Beijing University campus as a young man.  (Signed)
 
NEB/LHF/KBK 



25-May-2000 12:23 PM EDT (25-May-2000 1623 UTC)
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Source: Voice of America
.