Hong Kong's Victoria Park is turned into a sea of light Saturday, June 4, 2005, as tens of thousands people held a candlelight vigil to mark the16th anniversary of the military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on a pro-democracy student movement in Beijing on the same day. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
China Tightens Security Around Tiananmen
By CHUCK CHIANG, Associated Press Writer
BEIJING - China tightened security around Tiananmen Square on Saturday to prevent memorials on the anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. But in Hong Kong, tens of thousands of protesters staged a candlelight rally.
In Sydney, Australia, a Chinese diplomat who is seeking asylum emerged from hiding to address a memorial rally.
Tiananmen Square, the symbolic political heart of China, was open to the public. But extra carloads of police watched tourists on the vast plaza, where weeks of student-led demonstrations that drew tens of thousands ended in a military attack 16 years ago Saturday. Troops killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of protesters that day.
There was no public mention of the anniversary in China nor any sign of attempts to commemorate it.
The United States used the anniversary to press Beijing for a full account of the dead, missing and detained from what it called the "brutal and tragic" events of 1989 and demanded that China generally show greater respect for internationally recognized human rights.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States remembered the many Chinese citizens killed, detained, or missing in connection with the protests. In addition to those who died, thousands of Chinese were arrested and sentenced without trial, and as many as 250 still languish in prison for Tiananmen-related activities, he said.
"We call on the Chinese government to fully account for the thousands killed, detained, or missing, and to release those unjustly imprisoned," McCormack said.
"It is now time for the Chinese government to move forward with a reexamination of Tiananmen, and give its citizens the ability to flourish by allowing them to think, speak, assemble and worship freely. We continue to urge China to bring its human rights practices into conformity with international standards and law."
The day was especially sensitive because it followed the death in January of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party leader who was purged in 1989 for sympathizing with the protesters.
Communist leaders have eased many of the social controls that fueled the unrest but still crush any activity that they fear might challenge their monopoly on power. After an official ruling that the nonviolent protests were a subversive riot, activists and relatives of the dead who appeal that ruling are detained and harassed.
"Family members of victims, like the Tiananmen mothers, and other citizens who urge their government to undertake a reassessment of what happened June 4, 1989, should be free from harassment and detention," McCormack said.
In Hong Kong, a crowd estimated by organizers at 30,000-40,000 raised candles in the air in Victoria Park and sang solemn songs in the only large-scale memorial on Chinese soil. They carried signs that read: "Don't forget June 4" and "Democracy fighters live forever."
The former British territory retains many of its Western-style civil liberties — a status that many there say obligates them to speak out while those on the mainland cannot.
"Our slogan is 'Recognize history,' and we're asking Beijing to do just that," said a vigil organizer, Lee Cheuk-yan.
A younger generation of Chinese who came of age since the protests know little about 1989 because of an official ban on public discussion.
But many in Hong Kong are still emotional about the crackdown, which came as the territory was preparing for its 1997 return to Chinese rule.
"Hong Kong people will not forget this history when a government uses guns and tanks to crush students. It's very atrocious," said Shum Ming, a 58-year-old construction worker.
In their rare public comments about 1989, Chinese leaders defend the crackdown by pointing to the nation's emergence as an economic powerhouse since then, saying it would have been impossible without the enforced stability of one-party rule. A booming private economy has freed millions of Chinese from the structure of state jobs that controlled where they lived and worked — and even whom they could marry.
That defense was echoed Saturday by Donald Tsang, the leading candidate in the campaign to become Hong Kong's next leader.
"I had shared Hong Kong people's passion and impetus when the June 4 incident happened. But after 16 years, I've seen our country's impressive economic and social development," Tsang said. "My feelings have become calmer."
In Sydney, Chen Yonglin, a 37-year-old Chinese diplomat who abandoned his post, said at a memorial rally that he was seeking asylum in Australia because of the lack of freedoms in China.
"In 16 years, the Chinese government has done nothing for political reform," he said. "People have no political freedom, no human rights."
Chen was the consul for political affairs at the Chinese consulate in Sydney.
Terror on trialBy Mark Houser - TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, June 5, 2005
MADRID, Spain -- Two dozen men sit behind bulletproof glass in a new courtroom built to hold the biggest al-Qaida trial Europe has yet seen.
In proceedings that began in April, the Spanish National Court is considering whether the accused men belonged to a terrorist cell that helped kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.
Key testimony hinges on whether central figures in the alleged Madrid cell arranged a meeting in Spain two months before the attacks between hijacker Mohammed Atta and planner Ramzi Binalshibh.
Prosecutors also claim the group's leaders funneled money to the hijackers and to other terrorists in Europe, and that one man made videotapes of the World Trade Center and passed them to other al-Qaida members to plan the attacks.
Prosecutors have asked for 62,000-year sentences for the group's three central figures. But in reality, the three could face no more than 30 each. That's the longest anyone can be jailed in Spain. In addition, the country has no death penalty.
Accused cell member Yusuf Galan is not one of the major players. Galan, a Spaniard who converted to Islam, faces only 18 years for being part of the cell, visiting an Islamic militant training camp in Indonesia in 2001, and having illegal guns and knives in his home when he was arrested after the Sept. 11 attacks.
He also had militant literature, a map of London with a church and synagogue circled, and a map of Hannover, Germany.
And he had a map of Pittsburgh.
The map is a mystery. It is at least 40 years old. The Point Bridge, closed in 1959 and demolished thereafter, is still shown as a traffic artery across the Monongahela River, while the "proposed" Fort Duquesne Bridge, built in the 1960s, is just dotted lines.
A sequence of numbers -- 71, 73, 75, 76, 5, 64, 67, 68 -- is scrawled in one margin. Crestview Road, a hilly residential street in Banksville, is circled.
Residents of Crestview Road say they have not noticed any suspicious behavior on their small street, which is lined with middle-class brick houses in a neighborhood popular with city workers. Pittsburgh FBI special agent in charge Chris Briese declined to comment on the map.
The map raises the question: Why was Pittsburgh on the radar of an alleged Islamic terrorist in Spain?
One possibility: In the 1990s, a group of Saudi students in Pittsburgh published an Arabic-language magazine, Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, that often featured jihadist rhetoric. For example, one 1998 editorial called the United States a "strategic target" and wished for its destruction. The magazine was distributed to hard-line mosques in Europe and elsewhere until it ceased publication in 2000.
The magazine's publisher, Bandar Al-Mashary, and editor, Mohsen Al-Mohsen, headed an Islamic foundation based in Banksville and prayed at a temporary mosque in a Banksville hotel, both about a mile from Crestview Road. Both men returned to Saudi Arabia after getting doctorates at the University of Pittsburgh.
The lead prosecutor in the Spanish case, Pedro Rubiro, said the map is of little interest to his case. Galan has not been asked about it, and the government barred a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter from interviewing him.
Spanish authorities do not say Galan or any of the others on trial visited Pittsburgh.
A bigger trial
While observers on both sides of the Atlantic are watching the trial closely, a future Spanish courtroom battle looms larger -- that of the Madrid train bombers.
Cell phone-triggered backpack bombs exploded in Madrid's main train station and two other stops on March 11, 2004, killing 191 people. The political aftermath of those bombings ultimately toppled Spain's conservative government.
More than two dozen suspects, mostly Moroccan, have been jailed in the investigation, and dozens more have been released but are considered suspects. Authorities say at least one of the alleged al-Qaida ringleaders now on trial in Madrid also helped plan the train bombings.
In Spain, accused terrorists can wait up to four years in jail while the case against them is assembled, but a top official in the Spanish prosecutor's office said he expects the bomb trial to begin next year.
ail time can be cut short, as prosecutor Rubiro knows well.
His boss, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Jesus Santos, boasted that Rubiro was the first person in Spain to win a conviction against an Islamic terrorist group. That was in 1997.
One man Santos put away, an Algerian named Allekema Lamari, was released after an appeal.
Weeks after the Madrid attack, police tracked seven suspects to an apartment in the suburbs and surrounded it. The men inside chanted prayers, then blew themselves up.
DNA tests of the remains showed Lamari was one of them.
Asked how he felt when he heard the news that a man he had once put away might well have been one of the train bombers, Rubiro looked at the floor.
"I can't answer that," he said.
What went wrong?
Spain's legislature has created a 3/11 commission to examine what went wrong and to look for ways to improve security. It plans to publish its findings this month. Meanwhile, the government has added 300 intelligence personnel to handle terrorism and has tightened regulations on mining explosives, which were used in the bombings.
But the commission is frequently bogged down in strident partisanship, said Josep Guinart, a commission member and legislator who is aligned with the ruling socialist coalition.
"One of the problems of this commission is we are only politicians, so sometimes it means the commission is less a place for investigating what happened on the 11th of March, and more a place where the (political) parties have a fight," Guinart said.
The bombings took place three days before national elections. In the immediate aftermath, former President Jose Maria Aznar and other leaders from the then-ruling conservative party announced Basque terrorists were the likely culprits.
As facts emerged pointing to Islamic terrorism, protesters massed in the streets of Madrid to accuse the government of lying. Aznar, they said, was trying to obscure the real reason Spain was targeted -- its participation in the war in Iraq. The conservatives lost, and the troops were withdrawn soon after.
Conservative Senator Ignacio Cosido said blaming ETA, the Basque terrorist group, for 3/11 was a mistake. But he said ETA has killed more than 800 Spaniards in hundreds of attacks -- an ETA car bomb in Madrid injured five last month -- so investigators had good reason for their suspicions.
Cosido said his biggest worry is that the Spanish public will assume it is no longer targeted by Islamic terrorists now that its soldiers have left Iraq.
"My perception is that Spanish society doesn't have an understanding of the magnitude of this threat. They do not understand that we are not free of this threat," he said.
Spanish investigators announced last fall they had broken up a new Madrid bomb plot, this time with multiple targets, including a skyscraper, a soccer stadium and the Atocha train station again.
But some are skeptical, such as documentary filmmaker Miguel Angel Nieto, of Madrid.
"The police need to (prove) to public opinion that 3/11 was not because of the war in Iraq. So I think there were no plans to attack anything more," he said.
Nieto is one of a group of filmmakers who produced a collection of documentary short features called "Todos Ibamos en Ese Tren" ("We Were All on That Train") after the attacks. Proceeds went to the victims' families. The documentary has been shown in several film festivals, including Chicago.
Angel Nieto's segment is called "Victim Zero." In it, a wife, a mother, a friend and a daughter talk about the man they thought they had lost in the explosion, until someone spotted him on the news carrying a wounded man.
The man himself refused to talk -- many of the victims of the train attacks have asked for privacy -- but Angel Nieto says in the end it was better that way.
"My idea was there were a lot of anonymous people who were helping at that moment. This is one of them. It's not important, his identity. He is one of many," he said.
The piles of candles, floral bouquets and handwritten notes that once cluttered the floor of Atocha station have been cleaned up. In their place are two computer terminals where a passersby can scan a handprint -- a frequent image in anti-terror protests here -- and type testimonials to victims. Loudspeakers play a short loop of somber piano music.
"Life has to go on, but this is one way we can always remember that day," said Susana Calzado, 31, an accountant from Madrid who paused at the memorial for a quiet moment before walking to her train.