‘Man made fake spy charges’

Press, 1 May 1978, Page 9

‘Man made fake spy charges’

N’ZPA-Reuter Peking A man whose false charges of spying against 166 fellow research workers nine years ago sent some of them to their deaths, has been arrested. China’s official news agency has said. Some of the accused died under torture and others committed suicide, the New China News Agency reported. Now there were demands that the accuser be severely punished, the agency said. It related that Shan Kueichang had levelled the spy charges against other workers at the Changchun Ins’itute of Optical and Precision Machinery in northeastern Kirin province nine years ago. The agency said that the case had been reviewed since the arrest of the ext "emist “Gang of Four” in 1976, and it had now been established that the charges were totally false. It added that Shan himself had hidden a long record of collabo-

g i ration with the Japanese in I the 19405. e! All the victims had been) 11 exonerated, the agency said.) slThe survivors had been I fl rehabilitated and given new) si iobs. i-1 Those unable to work were receiving the best! d I medical care. Memorial ser-j si vices had been held for the) v I dead, and their families -) given pensions. The agency said that Shan! s) had used excruciating tor-1 /pure to extract “confessions”) ■ from the accused. ■’ When people at the in/istitute protested Shan retali-) ■! ated by collecting dissenting) -I views (they had) expressed! -'over technical or academic, - issues and said these were) s instances of “deliberate) sabotage by class enemies,” i » the agency said. 1 “As a result, nearly 100 - additional people, including i the well-known optics exi pert, Professor Wang Tas heng, were subjected to i marathon criticism meetings - and other forms of per- - i secution.”