U.S. Protests Firing on Envoys’ Quarters

The U.S. Embassy filed a protest today over what it called a premeditated army attack on apartments of American diplomats and other foreigners last month.

The protest is likely to further worsen relations already made tense by U.S. criticism of China’s crackdown on unarmed pro-democracy protesters.

Also today, colleagues of a detained Taiwanese journalist said Wang Dan, who heads a Chinese government list of 21 “most wanted” student activists, is believed to have been arrested.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Sheridan Bell said Charge d’Affaires Raymond Burghardt delivered the protest note to the Foreign Ministry, which did not respond immediately.

Chinese soldiers fired into Jianguomenwai apartment compound on June 6, a day after the State Department said the U.S. Embassy had given refuge to two Chinese dissidents, Fang Lizhi and his wife Li Shuxian.

A U.S. Embassy report charged the shooting was premeditated but did not link it to China’s anger over U.S. protection of Fang and Li.

The United States filed one protest shortly after the shooting. The new protest challenges for the first time the Chinese account that soldiers were responding to sniper fire from within the apartment compound.

At the time, Radio Beijing said one soldier was killed and three were injured, and plainclothes officers who went into the compound brought out a Chinese man they claimed was the sniper.

No witnesses reported seeing Chinese soldiers hit, however.

The U.S. report said the arrest appeared to have been staged. It also said the soldiers fired not only from the ground but from a building across the street, where they had taken up positions the day before.

If Wang has in fact been arrested, he would be the most prominent protest leader to have been captured so far. Wang, a history student at Beijing University, was a leader of seven weeks of student-led protests in Beijing for a freer society. He went underground after the army crushed the protests on June 3-4.

Wang and the Taiwanese journalist were driving across Beijing Sunday when they discovered they were being followed. The journalist got out and Wang sped away in the vehicle, colleagues said.

“We haven’t heard anything from Wang since then and we think he has been arrested,” one said.