Youths Warned Not to Rally in Peking Square
PEKING — Hundreds of students clustered around outlawed wall posters at Peking University today, discussing the true road to democracy and a possible New Year’s Day demonstration on the city’s vast central square.
A city official warned that anyone “who dares make trouble in the capital of our great socialist motherland and on sacred Tian An Men Square will be severely punished.”
His comments, carried in the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily, also accused the anti-communist leadership of Taiwan of mobilizing “secret agents” to incite the student demonstrators, the first time that charge has been made.
The newly pasted-up posters at Peking University accused the government of failing to live up to its promises of democratic reform and urged students to take the lead in bringing freedom and democracy to China.
A demonstration on Tian An Men Square would be the first Peking rally by the students outside their isolated academic area in the northwest part of the capital.
The municipal official, whose name was not used in the editorial statement, said “a handful of elements hostile to the socialist system are planning to create disturbances on Tian An Men Square soon in an attempt to create chaos in Peking, thus leading to nationwide chaos.”
Authorities say no arrests of students have been made so far in pro-democracy protests reported this month in at least 10 Chinese cities.
Tian An Men Square, where 1 million Red Guards assembled to wave their “little red books” of Mao Tse-tung slogans during the frenzied 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, is bordered by the Great Hall, Mao’s mausoleum, the National History Museum and the Forbidden Palace.
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