CHINA IN TURMOIL : Release Hong Kong Student, Britain Urges

Britain told China on Monday that it should immediately release a Hong Kong student arrested in Shanghai and warned that any maltreatment of Hong Kong Chinese would have damaging repercussions.

Meanwhile, Canada recalled its ambassador to China for consultations to protest the military crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark said.

Clark said Ambassador Earl Drake will be brought back to Ottawa by the end of the week to talk about what the Canadian government can do to influence events in China.

The minister said the government is working with other countries to try to “encourage the Chinese government to respect the whole democratic process that has been shown through the demonstrations by the students and other people in China.”

Canada, with $2.9 billion in two-way trade and no arms sales to China, has little power to force authorities to ease their strong-arm tactics, political analysts say. But Canada, with more than 360,000 Canadians of Chinese origin, feels it has a special relationship. Canada was one of the first Western countries to recognize Communist China in 1970.

Gravely Concerned

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said that Deputy Undersecretary David Gillmore told Chinese Charge d’Affaires Song Mingjiang that Britain is gravely concerned over the detention of Yao Yongzhan--described as a leader of Shanghai’s outlawed Autonomous Student Union--who was seized at the city’s airport as he attemped to leave Sunday.

“We urged that Yiu Yung Chin (as Yao’s name is rendered in Cantonese) should be immediately returned to Hong Kong,” the spokesman said.

And the governor of Hong Kong, in the wake of what he called appalling events in China, appealed to the British government to deal generously with Hong Kong before the colony returns to Beijing’s rule.

David Wilson, urging the government to allow Hong Kong citizens the right of entry to Britain, said: “If the worst came to the worst, Britain has a very strong moral obligation.”

Wilson, addressing the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, was outlining an “Armageddon scenario” for Hong Kong after Britain hands the colony back to China in 1997.

Asked by a committee member whether Britain should try to wrest more concessions, Wilson said: “It is more a question of adding on to rather than to start renegotiating. My concept is remedial.” He said he was referring specifically to the right of Hong Kong people to enter Britain and the deployment of Chinese troops in Hong Kong after 1997.

News Crew Detained

Meanwhile, British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent Brian Barron reported from Beijing that he and his film crew had been detained for three hours by Chinese troops and were forbidden to leave the country.

He said the crew, which had been filming clandestinely from their car because of martial-law restrictions, were marched to a martial-law center where their videotapes were confiscated and their passports briefly taken away.

“They suggested that a number of us should write self-criticisms of our mistakes, which I did most eagerly,” Barron said. “Then they gave us an extremely severe talking-to on what would happen next time and how unpleasant the results would be. I am feeling very depressed. They said we cannot leave China until they give the authorization.”