Peking Students Defy Ban on Pro-Democracy Protests : Organizers Face Punishment, Officials Warn

Thousands of activists led by students from Peking Teachers’ University marched through snowy streets today, beating drums and shouting, “Long live democracy!” despite a citywide ban on unauthorized demonstrations.

The predawn march followed stern warnings from authorities that lawbreakers would be punished, and it appeared that China’s fledgling movement for democratic reform was edging one step closer to a showdown.

Police watched from a distance and did not interfere, but the official Peking Evening News called the action illegal and said “chief organizers will be held legally responsible according to law.”

A CBS cameraman tried to film about 100 students looking at posters at Peking University describing today’s march, but campus authorities hauled him in and he was not allowed to leave until he turned over the film two hours later.

Another official paper, the Peking Daily, warned in a front-page editorial today that “big character” posters put up on college campuses during the wave of protests are illegal and those erecting them are liable to prosecution.

According to China’s criminal code, a person can be jailed for up to three years for insulting or slandering others through posters. Those advocating overthrow of the government through “counterrevolutionary” slogans and leaflets can receive prison terms of up to five years.

3 Workers Arrested

Three workers who damaged cars and solicited money were arrested after huge student demonstrations in Shanghai a week ago, but no confirmed arrests of students have occurred during demonstrations in at least nine cities in the last month.

The demonstrations so far have been peaceful, and most of the students have not directly challenged the socialist system or communist rule.

Posters at Peking University said hundreds of students from the teachers’ university marched out of the campus in anger at 1 a.m. today after a pro-democracy poster was torn down.

They walked to nearby Peoples’ University and Peking University, picking up students along the way, and wound up five hours later at Qinghua University with a crowd of thousands, the posters said.

An editorial today in People’s Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, attacked those who would spurn the party and the socialist system in their advocacy of democracy.

It noted “a lot of muddleheaded and erroneous viewpoints on the question of democracy of which the most outstanding one is the idea that one can discard the party leadership and the socialist system when talking about democracy.”

China’s socialist democracy is “not yet perfect,” it acknowledged. But it said a “small handful of people with ulterior motives” are using existing difficulties “to resort to fabrications, rumor-mongering and vilification in an attempt to debase the party leadership and socialist system and confuse and poison people’s minds.”