CAMPUS AND AREA
University Daily Kansan, November 15, 1984 Page 11
Executions cut crime in China
By United Press International
PEKING - The Ministry of Public Security, declaring "it is good to have some people executed," yesterday said China's use of capital punishment contributed to a 30 percent reduction in the crime rate during the past year.
Under fire from international human rights groups, the ministry held its first news conference with foreign journalists since the beginning of a year-old anti-crime campaign in which an estimated 5,000 Chinese have been executed.
"It was true we executed some people in the past year, but only because in the previous few years we didn't do a good job of punishing
capital offenders," said ministry spokesman Wang Jingrong.
"In a country like ours with a population of 1 billion, it is good to have some people executed as an example to educate others."
Western diplomats in Peking and a recent Armnesty International report critical of the anti-crime campaign estimate more than 5,000 Chinese have been executed by firing squads since August 1983.
Amnesty, the London-based human rights organization, said many of the victims were executed after "swift trials" and for relatively minor offenses, including one man who was put to death for kicking women.
Wang also denied there were any political prisoners in Chinese jails.
but acknowledged "a very small number" of "reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries" had been imprisoned.
"After a year's work, it has come down to 5 per 10,000, close to our lowest rate." Wang said, noting there had been a 30 percent drop in the crime rate "since the beginning of the struggle."
He bleamed lawlessness during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution for an increase in crime from three offenses for every 10,000 people in the 1950s to eight for every 10,000 at the beginning of the current campaign.
But he said some young people still "blindly accepted" negative influences brought into China since the country's opening to the outside world and warned they would "not be allowed to run wild."
Synod to ask for women priests
By United Press International
LONDON — The Church of England will vote today for the second time on the controversial issue of abortion, women should be allowed to become priests.
ment, asks that legislation be drafted permitting the ordination of women
The vote, which will be held at the thrice-yearly meeting of the church's general synod, or parlia-
A similar motion was defeated at the synod in 1978, prompting a leading female supporter of women's rights to criticize her for bread and you gave us a stipe.
More than four out of five members of the Church of England, or 84 percent, favor the ordination of women to the priesthood, according
to a recent poll conducted for the church. In 1978, 79 percent said they were in favor of it.
Many churchmen voted against the motion in 1978, even though they may have been personally in favor of it. The other group was split the church, observers said.
Weekly church-goers are the group most opposed to women priests, the poll showed.
Soviets ask U.S. to talk about arms
By United Press International
MOSCOW — The Soviet Union, reacting to the first test of a U.S. anti-satellite warhead, yesterday repeated its call for talks to ban "Star Wars" weapons and accused Washington of trying to militarize space.
"Obsessed with the wish to carry the arms race over into outer space in the hope to ensure military superiority, the Pentagon is continuing anti-satellite weapons tests," the official Tass news agency said.
The Soviet Union is thought to have a crude but operational anti-satellite system, lifted into orbit by missile and exploded near the target.
The Air Force said the trial was the second test of the anti-satellite weapon since January and the first involving a warhead.
The U.S. version, tested over Vandenburg Air Force Base in California, is fired from an F-15 and the aircraft is fired from aerial transmissions from enemy satellites.
In August, the Soviets urged the United States to conduct negotiations on banning weapons in space, but the talks were never begun.
Tass quoted President Konstantin Chernenko's request in a recent interview in the Washington Post for talks on a new agreement to ban weapons in space.
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Protesters greet nuclear cargo
By United Press International
TOKYO — A ship carrying 638 pounds of highly radioactive plutonium docked safely under heavy guard yesterday to end a 40-day journey from France, and was greeted by anti-nuclear protesters.
The bulk carrier "Seishin Maru" slipped into a Tokyo port about 11:25 a.m. CST and moored at a pier cordoned off by riot police, NHK, Japan's public broadcasting network, reported.
The cargo, encased in a gray container, was unloaded about $3 \frac{1}{2}$ hours later and trucked out of the port area to a reactor northeast of the capital. The 638 pounds of fuel required by the several nuclear bombs but is to be used to fuel the Joyo fast breeder reactor plant.
THE UNITED STATES, which enriched the plutonium before it was reprocessed in France, approved the transfer of the material under a U.S.-Japan agreement.
Protesters were kept well away from the pier, but three activists from the environmental group Greenpeace launched a 7-foot boat that freed the freighter before being apprehended by naval boats.
The early arrival of the ship held down the number of protesters, although demonstrations were scheduled later in the day.
Police said 800 officers, backed by riot control vehicles and a water cannon, sealed off the pier area. Eighteen harbor patrol boats and a helicopter were deployed as it steamed into the floodlit quay.
The Greenepeace activists unfurled a banner reading "U.K. France, Japan, No Nuclear Shipments."
A STUDENT GROUP also chartered the 32-foot boats that carried protesters under escort of the ship. After after the plutonium was unloaded
"This shipment is one more step to the plutonium society that infringes on democracy and endangers peoples' lives," said
Greenpeace organizer Campbell Plowden, 30, of Seattle, Wash., said, 'What they are doing is outrageous and calls for the strongest kind of non-violent protest we can mount.
Minami Suzuki, spokesman for Gensukin, The Japan Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs.
Organizers said they expected at least 1,500 protesters, representing labor, student, environmental and leftist political groups, to gather later near the Aoumi (Blue Ocean) berth just north of Haneda Airport.
"This plutonium is extremely deadly and if it sunk at sea it would have had unknown catastrophic impact on the marine environment."
Anti-nuclear groups have called on citizens to block the highway and plan to distribute leaflets to residents along the probable route to the Joyo reactor 66 miles northeast of Tokyo.
The 16,642-ton freighter left the French port of Cherbourg Oct. 5.
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