Chinese Students Rally in U.S. to Demand Democracy

Despite threats from their government, more than 1,000 Chinese students attending American universities came here from across the United States on Sunday to call for a “free and democratic China” and march in protest in front of their embassy.

“You are the hope that one day soon we will see democracy in China,” Father Robert Drinan, a Roman Catholic priest and former Massachusetts congressman, told the rally at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. The protest was designed as a counterdemonstration to the 40th anniversary celebration of Communist rule in Beijing.

In Los Angeles, about 500 Chinese students and sympathizers protested peacefully outside the Chinese Consulate with prayers for those killed last June in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square, freedom songs and a mock trial of Chinese Communist leaders staged against the backdrop of a rented Hollywood tank.

A declaration adopted by the rally in Washington demanded revision of the Chinese constitution, protection of human rights, free elections and a “free market economy.”

Then, citing the message of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from the same steps two decades ago, the declaration concluded, “We have a dream . . . of a free and democratic China.”

At the rally, organized by the Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars, addresses alternated with rock groups that played songs written to commemorate the massacre of Chinese students in Tian An Men Square.

Most of the Chinese students wore T-shirts proclaiming their commitment to democracy and held banners identifying their schools--from UCLA and Washington State to Michigan and Harvard.

The crowd was made up mostly of students from mainland China, with a smattering of Chinese-Americans. Up to 40,000 mainland Chinese are enrolled in about 200 American universities.

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), who has championed legislation in Congress to allow the students to remain beyond their visa deadlines, said that Chinese officials have warned students against “activities that could jeopardize their future and that of their families” in China.

In particular, they were told that “attendance here could be regarded as a counterrevolutionary activity,” Gorton said. Such threats are impermissible in the United States, he declared.

At the Los Angeles rally, organized by the Joint Committee of Chinese Students and Scholars in Southern California, young families with babies sat and stood in Shatto Place outside the closed consulate, laughing and applauding skits commemorating the Chinese army’s firing on students last June. A rubber-tired movie-prop tank, rented with its driver for $500, set the somber scene.

Protesters placed several dozen carnations on a mock casket and paused in silent prayer in memory of the slain students. Waving placards urging “Leave Students Alone” and “Abolish One-Party Rule,” the crowd shouted “Down with communism!” and sang a parody of a People’s Republic of China patriotic song, substituting words that translated to “There is no new China until there is no communism.”

Clearly enjoying a mock “court of history,” the protesters refused to volunteer any defense counsel for three men wearing masks representing China’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, President Yang Shangkun and Premier Li Peng. They laughed as a “jury” sentenced the three to death by burning, hanging and burial alive.

Los Angeles police closed Shatto Place between 4th and 6th Streets to vehicular traffic during the two-hour program of speeches, songs and skits.

No one from the consulate appeared at the rally.

Times staff writer Myrna Oliver, in Los Angeles, contributed to this story.