From: phsjjc@emrycc.cc.emory.edu (JAMES J. CEN)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.china
Subject: Forward: Shen Tong? (IX)
Date: 9 Nov 1992 21:09:08 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

Dear Netters:

	The following is a report in the Oct. 29 issue of Boston Globe 
on Shen Tong's press conference.  You are welcome to comment on it.  I
will offer an analysis of this interesting piece of reporting in a few
days and will send the gathered opinions (including my own) to the reporters.

James J. Cen
Emory University
===========================================================================
Chinese dissident Shen Tong describes weeks in captivity

By Charles A. Radin
GLOBE STAFF

and Betsy Q. M. Tong
Contributing Reporter

Communism in China is a dead shell, waiting to be swept 
away, according to the dissident student leader Shen Tong, 
who returned to Greater Boston Sunday after almost two 
months in custody in Beijing.

In a news conference yesterday at Democracy for China 
Foundation offices in Newton, Shen and Ross Terrill - a 
South End-based author and scholar expelled from China 
when Shen was arrested - said Chinese society is evolving 
in ways similar to Eastern Europe be fore the fall of 
communism there.

Appearing pale but speaking resolutely after being held 
incommunicado by Chinese authorities for 54 days, Shen, 
a graduate student at Boston University, said he and 
dissidents with whom he met throughout China held "a 
shared belief that China is ready to move forward."
"It is important for the exiled democracy movement to 
reach back ... to stand with those who struggle on the 
mainland," he asserted.

But even as Shen recounted how police interrogators who 
had tried to bully him backed down when he answered 
them aggressively, he was under growing fire at the news 
conference and in the exile community generally.
Older Chinese scholars and reporters for some Chinese-
language media appeared at the news conference or called 
reporters to assail Shen's claim to a leading role in China's 
pro-democracy movement, the movement whose 
repression on Tiananmen Square in 1989 created the exile 
community.

Shen has "greatly exaggerated his own importance," said 
Huang Yasheng, a former activist in the China Information 
Center, from which Shen's Democracy for China 
Foundation arose. "As Chairman Mao said, 'Revolution is 
not a tea party.' But it should not be a press conference 
either."

Huang repeated unconfirmed reports circulating among 
Chinese exiles that Shen's trip had caused arrests of other 
dissidents on the mainland, and accused Shen of misusing 
China Information Center funds.

The abuse-of-funds charges were similar to those lodged 
against Wu'er Kaixi, another, better-known pro-democracy 
activist who ran afoul of Huang and other senior Chinese 
graduate students two years ago. The Information Center 
collapsed during the charges and countercharges; the 
foundation which arose with Shen in the leadership 
position never won support among the senior Chinese 
here.

The split in the exile community is over policy as well as 
personalities and personal styles. The younger students and 
their supporters among American politicians generally feel 
the United States should confront and oppose China as it 
did the Soviet Union on human rights issue9. The older 
exiles in general believe progress toward democracy is 
being made in China, and support the US policy of 
continued friendly engagement with China despite the 
regime's shortcomings.

Shen and Marshall Strauss, the foundation's executive 
director, sharply, sometime9 angrily, dismissed the critical 
allegations yesterday. They asserted that Shen has never 
overstated his role in the pro-democracy movement. They 
said dissidents who met with Shen prior to his confinement 
by Chinese authorities on Sept. 1 knew whom they were 
meeting and were aware of the risks involved.
Shen said he was taken by Chinese officials to the top 
floor of a local hotel and confined there, under heavy 
guard, without any formal charges being placed against 
him.

He said he was not tortured or physically harmed, but that 
he was interrogated for long periods of time, not allowed 
to go out, and not allowed to have news or contact with his 
family.

"But they got nowhere," Shen said. At times his 
questioners tried to have him believe he would be 
sentenced to a long prison term, Shen said, but he 
responded that they should "remember what happened to 
the police of East Germany and the KGB.... You will all 
be judged by history."

This, Shen said, produced a less threatening round of 
conversations that eventually led to his release.
===========================TO BE CONTINUED==============================

Newsgroups: talk.politics.china