CHINA IN TURMOIL : Thousands Rally to Cries of ‘Shame’

Thousands of people rallied Friday in nationwide demonstrations in support of China’s pro-democracy movement, including a large, rain-soaked parade through Manhattan and several smaller but vocal protests in Los Angeles.

An estimated 18,000 people chanting “Shame, shame, shame” packed the plaza in front of the United Nations in the largest U.S. demonstration of outrage over the bloody crackdown on student protesters in Beijing last weekend.

“Pray for the Martyrs,” banners carried by the New York crowd urged.

Elsewhere, students took time off from final examinations to honor the dead, estimated to be as many as 3,000. In Chicago, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, angry voices were raised against China’s hard-line Communist government on a day when the leadership in Beijing appeared to strengthen its political grip.

Everywhere the sentiment was the same: sorrow and shame. “This is outrageous. This is how the Communist Party works,” said Chester Mei, a physics student at the City College of New York. “The U.S. government could have done more and could still do more.”

Mexican, American Flags

About 30 Latino and Asian students at East Los Angeles Community College held a campus rally and then marched two miles to Monterey Park. Speakers at the rally addressed the students in Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese and English, as students waved Mexican and American flags.

“This is to show we are on the same side,” said Philip Agredano, 19, a second-year student at the college who helped organize the rally. “We are all united.”

About 50 Chinese student mourners folded paper into delicate white and yellow flowers and, with bowed heads and tears in their eyes, placed them before a makeshift memorial by the Bruin Bear stature in the center of the UCLA campus. Other students whirled past, rushing off to final exams.

Tong Boning, a graduate student in mathematics, was supposed to be one of them, but he and Ding Jian, a graduate student in library and information science, disappeared this week after returning to China to support the student democracy movement.

Hui Feng, a graduate student in economic geography, said the UCLA students have raised several thousand dollars to be spent for medical aid to students injured by Chinese government troops, for fax machines and perhaps for an underground newspaper.

Another student, clutching a copy of a Communist newspaper, said: “The government is our enemy; it’s the enemy of all Chinese people.”

Under massed umbrellas in New York, protesters chanting “freedom will survive” began the day at a rally in a park in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Escorted by a large contingent of police, they marched north to the United Nations.

“Long live democracy!” and “Communist Party: Down, down, down!” they shouted. On a day when weather forecasters issued a flood watch for the New York metropolitan area, the long line of demonstrators stalled traffic, creating a cacophony of blaring horns. Some merchants emerged from their shops to view the procession and applauded.

At the rally, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) sought to defend the Bush Administration’s cautious approach to the crisis, but he was roundly booed and cut short his remarks. “I am not one bit ashamed of the United States government,” he said, referring to Bush’s rejection of economic sanctions for Beijing. “Our President has spoken clearly and firmly. . . .”

But many of the protesters disagreed, escalating their booing.

“We thought the senator was here to show his support, and we were disappointed,” said Nora Chang Wang, an assistant commissioner in the New York City Department of Employment, who was the rally’s master of ceremonies.

New York’s Mayor Edward I. Koch, who also addressed the rally, declared: “The skies are dark and the rains are like tears of heaven.” Later, the demonstrators marched six abreast through the traffic-clogged streets to the Chinese Consulate for a candlelight vigil.

Outside the United Nations itself, where about 15 Chinese students were in their fourth day of a hunger strike, the protesters set up several tents and displayed a six-foot statue topped by a torch. It was a replica of the “Goddess of Democracy” that the pro-democracy demonstrators had erected in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square before the crackdown.

In Chicago, where about 1,500 people gathered downtown, church bells throughout the city pealed out after a moment of silence during the rally.

“No matter how violent or oppressive, no government can forever deny the hopes and aspirations of its citizens,” Mayor Richard M. Daley said. “We are here this afternoon to show our solidarity with the Chinese people.”

Elsewhere:

-- Chinese students at Princeton University held a solemn memorial service.

-- At UC San Diego, about 1,500 Chinese and American students sang the John Lennon song “Imagine” and other peace anthems at a mournful noontime gathering. Organizers sold red-and-white T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Dying for Democracy” over a globe with China highlighted.

Times staff writers Irene Chang, Valarie Basheda and Michael J. Ybarra, in Los Angeles, contributed to this story.