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May 25, 2000

Killing of Beijing Student Sets Off Protests

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

 


Agence France-Presse
Students reading a protest letter on a campus bulletin board on Tuesday at a vigil at Beijing University. A student was raped and killed last week.

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BEIJING, May 24 -- The rape and killing of a student at Beijing University, China's most prestigious college, has set off student demonstrations, in defiance of a general ban on public protests.

The university, long an oasis for liberal ideas, was the intellectual epicenter of the huge pro-democracy protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989 that ended violently when troops dispersed the protesters, killing hundreds.

Officials are ever wary of student movements at the university, and the current protests are being conducted two weeks before the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 crackdown.

On Tuesday evening, after the university had belatedly announced the death on Friday of the first-year student, Qiu Qingfeng, hundreds of students held a vigil filled with songs and chants and a sit-in outside an administration building. They demanded to speak with top university officials. At one point, a few students forced their way into the building.

The students resumed protesting today, ultimately making university officials allow them to hold a memorial service on Thursday. Today, a makeshift altar was constructed on campus, covered with candles and flowers.

Although the core of the demands focused on campus security and the university's responsibility for the death, the protest also gave students an opportunity to vent their anger on other issues like rising tuition costs and attempts to limit student expression.

"We can't stay silent," said a poster seen on campus on Tuesday.

Student demonstrations are rare in China and require government permission. Students from Beijing University and other local institutions were allowed to protest against the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade last year, and that resulted in demonstrations outside the American Embassy here. But more recently, students were denied permission for rallies over independence for Taiwan.

Through posters and meetings with student leaders, university officials urged students today "not to do anything excessive or emotional."

Computer bulletin boards at the university were closed today, but the anger quickly spilled over to more popular chat rooms.

"You've tried so hard to fool students for 11 years," one person wrote on Sina.com, a reference to the the 1989 protests. "You should not use the lie of 'being rational' to cheat students from mourning."

Another person posted at the site, "They are enrolling more students and making more money, so why don't they improve the facilities?"

Ms. Qiu lived at a secondary campus on the outskirts of Beijing, an hour's bus ride from the main campus. That branch, in rural Changping, has housed some first-year students for much of the last decade. Some students said it was to have been closed last year.

Ms. Qiu was raped and killed while walking from a public bus stop back to the branch campus. She was on her way back from the main campus, where she had taken an examination.

The university has a shuttle bus between the campuses, but it is unclear whether it was available when Ms. Qiu headed home.



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