The World - News from Aug. 17, 1989

A Chinese student leader told a U.N. Human Rights Committee that 120,000 people may have been secretly killed since the June crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Li Lu gave the estimate at a meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination. Li, on Beijing’s most-wanted list for his role in the student-led movement, urged the panel to condemn China for human rights violations. China’s official observer at the Geneva meeting, Zhang Yishan, walked out of the meeting as Li took the floor. Yishan called Li a “criminal.” Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, released a statement after Li’s speech that said the “atmosphere of terror” following the June crackdown made it impossible to say how many were killed.