Police Raids On Kyoto Students

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 15

Police Raids On Kyoto Students

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) KYOTO (Japan), September 21. Two thousand riot police raided Kyoto University today, and evicted all but 10 radical students who barricaded themselves in a clock tower after hundreds of other students, throwing stones and fire-bombs, had been subdued.

The police arrested 16 students and 11 young university instructors, sympathetic to student demands, for university reforms, who. had defied orders to surrender.

Some students were burnt when their fire-bombs ignited before they were able to hurl them.

The injured students apparently disappeared after taking off their burning clothes, but the police were unable to say where they were, or how seriously they had been burnt. The police put out many fires started by the incendiary bombs, but were unable to save two cars the students had overturned and set on fire to block a campus entrance. Water guns and tear gas were used to force the students out of the university buildings, which had been barricaded with desks, chairs and concrete slabs.

The 10 students in the clock tower vowed over loud-spea-kers that they would hold fast —“even if it meant death.” A police spokesman said

that the police would wait and move slowly, to prevent any harm to either the students or the police.