NATION/WORLD
University Daily Kansan/Thursday September 5,1991
7
NATION/WORLD BRIEFS
Tokyo
Soviet Communists flee to China
The Associated Press
Thousands of KGB officers and Soviet Communist Party members have defected to northern China after last month's failed coup in the city, Japanese newspapers reported yesterday.
The Chinese Communist Party has decided in principle to provide asylum to the defectors but not to openly discuss the matter, said the nation's leader Nilson Ketai Shimbun and Sankei Shimbun.
The papers quoted unidentified sources in Tokyo familiar with China.
No such defects have been reported in the Soviet Union since the abortive takeover.
New York
Train driver faces murder charges
The motorman whose hurting subway train derailed, killing five passengers, has been indicted on five counts of murder.
Police said that 38-year-old Robert Ray was drunk at the time of the crash Aug. 28.
District Attorney Robert Morgenthaud said Tuesday the grand jury upgraded the charges against Ray from manslaughter to murder. This decision was based on evidence that Ray fell asleep at the controls and failed to brake as he entered the station where it jumped the tracks.
A manslaughter conviction would require a jury to find that a defendant acted recklessly. A murder conviction would require a finding that the actor died with "deprived indifference" on life.
The murder charges carries a minimum of 15 years to life in prison.
Stuttgart, Germany
Witness speaks out in Nazi trial
A witness in the war-crimes trial of Josef Schwammerberger said yesterday that she saw the former Nazi labor camp commandant fatally shoot at least three people in 1943.
Helena Caspi, 75, who now lives in Tel Aviv, gave the testimony in the Stuttgart regional court, which is now hearing the last major trial of World War II crimes expected in Germany.
Schwammerberger, 79, is charged with personally killing 43 people and abetting the deaths of more than 3,000 other inmates from 1942 to 1944 at the Nazi run camps at Przemysl, Rozwadow and Mieleen near Krakow, Poland.
Most of the victims were Jews.
Caspi said her husband and parents-in-law were among the 1,000 Jewish inmates who were exterminated at Przemysl.
De Klerk unveils new constitution
BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — President F. W. de Kleirk proposed a new constitution yesterday that would allow Blacks to hold strong role for White and other minorities.
The Associated Press
The African National Congress, the leading Black opposition group, immediately rejected the plan, calling it undemocratic and designed to maintain White privileges.
D Klekr's proposal, outlined at a congress of his rulers' national Party, would extend voting rights to the 30-million black majority and end centuries of White political dominance.
But the plan effectively gives Whites and other minorities veto power on major policy decisions, a provision Black groups call intolerable.
"Our basic freedoms cannot be shackled by privileged vetoes," a statement by the militant Pan Africanist Congress said.
The president argued that the racially and culturally diverse country required consensus politics rather than a winner-take-all system. He wants opposition groups to have a strong voice at every level of government to prevent domination by a single party.
De Klerk's plan calls for a collective presidency, a two-chamber legislature and a strong constitution to guarantee the rights of minorities.
"This does not mean apartheid in another guise, but merely what it says—full rights for the majority, but not the ability to trample down or destroy the rights and values of others," de Klek told more than 700 delegates who filled the city hall auditorium in Bloemfontein.
The delegates interrupted de Klerk repeat-ally with loud applause during the 45-minute session.
The ANC, meanwhile, denounced every major provision of the plan.
It is "a recipe for disaster, designed to deny a future South African government the power to truly liberate the country from the misery of apartheid has wrought," it said in a statement.
De Klerk does not have to call an election until 1994, which is seen as the deadline for negotiating a non-racial constitution.
During de Klerk's two years in power, the government has repealed all major apartheid laws. He says he's ready to begin constitutional negotiations with the ANC and prosecution groups, the last and most difficult political reform still confronting the country.
But the ANC has so far refused to enter talks, demanding the government do more to increase its capacity.
De Klerk also called for a bill of human rights, an independent judiciary, an impartial civil service and other measures to ensure the rights of all South Africans.
The presidency would be replaced by a three to five member executive council that would include members of opposition parties. The Cabinet would also have posts reserved for opposition groups.
For example, if the ANC were to win a national election, its leader, Nelson Mandela, would presumably get one of the seats on the council. Other seats could go to de Klerk. The ANC was the first to vote for Mahatma Butelehe, head of the conservative, Zulbi-based Inkatha Freedom Party.
Such an arrangement would limit — or possibly neutralize — the power of the party that got the most votes, but could help prevent disintegration into political faction fighting.
There would be a two-chamber legislature. The lower house would be elected with seats allocated to political parties on a proportional basis. A second chamber would have equal representation elected from nine administrative districts.
Lawmakers scuffle with Chinese police
The Associated Press
BEIJING — Chinese police yesterday stopped three U.S. lawmakers who laid flowers and held up a banner in Tiananmen Square in honor of activists stain when the 1989 pro-democracy movement was crushed by the Chinese army.
The three — Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Rep. Ben Jones, D-Ga. and Rep. John Miller, R-Wash. — had been holding meetings with Chinese officials to press for human rights improvements.
"It was important for us to make a gesture in summary of those people," Jones said. "We are a community of young people."
Hampered by the language barrier, they were allowed to leave the square after a short, confused exchange with police.
Police scuffled with three U.S. television camera crews that fulmed the incident and detained them for a while.
The three legislators had held up a banner about three feet long saying in Chinese and English, "To the people of China."
They also made short statements to the crowd that they would then hand on the ground small white flowers if they were
At a news conference at the U.S. Embassy shortly before the incident, the legislators said they had stressed in talks with Chinese officials that China could lose its most-favored-nation trade status if it did not release people jailed for taking part in the 1989 democracy movement.
The group quoted Chinese officials as saying they
are considering allowing international humanitarian groups to visit prisoners and monitor their conditions. China previously has allowed foreigners to visit prisoner populations, but generally has barred access to political prisoners.
Tiananmen Square, a vast expanse in central Beijing, was the headquarters of student-led protesters who held marches and sit-ins for seven weeks in 1989 to demand political reform. The army opened fire on the protesters on June 3-4, 1989, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians.
Jones said the statement he made at the square read in part: "These three flowers symbolize liberty, justice and democracy. Those who died here on June 4, 1989, did not die in vain. They were catalysts for the extraordinary changes that are taking place throughout the world."
Two policemen ran up and tried to stop the legislators as they walked away after the flowers were laid.
Jones said he kept going. He said a plainclothes officer who had shadowed the group on its travels around Beijing apparently signaled to the police to go. He said the entire incident was over in minutes.
No one from the U.S. Embassy was with the congressional group at the time.
Seven members of camera crews for the television networks CBS, ABC and CNN, who filmed the legislators' flower-laying and encounter with police, were detained by police officers for half an hour on the square and then taken to a nearby police station. They were released an hour later.
Abortion foes unable to agree on ordinance
The Associated Press
WICHTA — Moderate and conservative anti-abortion factions here are divided over the wording of an abortion restriction referendum.
Moderate abortion opponents said Tuesday they thought any step to restrict abortion would be progress but conservatives said anything less than a complete ban supported abortion.
"There is no unity in the pro-life movement, and we have to deal with that," said Alan Weldon, a former president of the moderate Kansans for Life. "So far, that has put things on hold."
Abortion opponents met Aug. 20 as a new consortium dubbed the "Hope for the Heartland Coalition." The group rejected a proposal to push for a referendum on an ordinance drafted by Wichita City Council member Frank Ojile. The proposal called for restrictions, but not an outright ban on abortions.
Ojie said that a referendum on the ordinance should be considered.
He said the push for a public vote would be announced at a raily Aug. 25.
"The only way you're going to make any headway at all is to take what you can get and then move on from there," Weldon said.
Weldon said the problem was lack of interest in compromise by those most active in the referendum group. "The Hope for the Heartland Coalition people want the strictest thing they can get; they're not willing to settle for less," he said.
Pat Turner, president of the Wichita Chapter of the conservative Right to Life of Kansas, couldn't agree more.
"We want no exceptions, no compromise," she said "This is what it's all about."
Mary Wilkinson, representative for the coalition, acknowledged the ideological schism among abortion opponents.
"That is a concern," she said. "The coalition includes Kansas Right to Life and others who won't settle for anything but an all-or-nothing approach, while Kansans for Life and Life Inc. support a more moderate approach." Life Inc. is the local chapter of Kansans for Life.
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