Chinese Seize Tourist Film of Protest Scene : Soldiers Halt Japan Tour Buses Near Tian An Men Square

Chinese troops armed with submachine guns stopped and boarded three buses carrying Japanese tourists today and confiscated rolls of film shot in the Beijing square where the pro-democracy movement was crushed.

A Japanese Embassy official told reporters that the tourists returned safely to their hotel after soldiers took about 10 rolls of film.

He said the tourists had stopped in Beijing on their way back from an international youth festival in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

One of the passengers told a foreign reporter that soldiers pursued the buses from the heavily guarded Tian An Men Square in central Beijing and brought them to a halt by the nearby Friendship Store for foreigners.

Hundreds Killed

He said he and the other passengers had taken pictures of the square where troops and tanks crushed a protest by unarmed supporters of China’s democracy movement June 4. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were killed.

The Japanese official said the embassy had no immediate comment on the bus incident.

Under martial law regulations, which remain in force, troops patrol the streets and guard key intersections and public buildings. It is an offense to photograph the soldiers.

In another development today, China ordered major joint-venture hotels in Beijing to unhook satellite dishes that receive foreign news broadcasts, mainly from Cable News Network.

Some hotels also receive the U.S. Armed Forces Radio and Television Service and the Japan Broadcasting Corp.

Service Called Unfair

An official at Beijing’s Travel and Tourism Bureau said satellite service was ordered cut because it is unfair.

But Vito Maggiolo, CNN managing editor in Beijing, said: “Our guess is that they are concerned that the hotel staff is seeing it.”

China is engaged in an intensive propaganda campaign to discredit Western news accounts of a seven-week student movement for democracy and a military crackdown on June 3-4.