China School Chief Blames Blacks for Riots

The president of a Chinese university embroiled in a violent racial conflict said today that Africans were to blame for an incident that set off five days of anti-black demonstrations.

Yang Ruiju, president of Hehai University, said in an interview that Africans planned a Christmas Eve attack on Chinese university officials that injured 11 Chinese.

Yang also said that seven or eight of the 140 Africans being held at a secret guest house outside Nanjing are suspects in the Dec. 24 clash that started over the Africans’ refusal to register the names of the Chinese girlfriends they were taking to a campus party.

“The Africans did this in a planned way,” Yang said. “If they have broken university regulations, we will punish them. If they have broken the law, we will take them to court.” Yang said no Chinese students would be punished for destroying property in the African students’ dormitory.

“They didn’t hurt anybody so none of them will be punished,” he said.

Chinese students and other youths rampaged through the Africans’ dormitory Sunday and have held street demonstrations every night since calling for the offenders to be punished.

The early demonstrations were highly racist in tone, with youths chanting “Down with black devils!” and “Black devils go home!”

Yang said the African students planned the attack because they were upset over a wall being built around their dormitory so “they couldn’t play with girls freely.”