Not first time Kiwi hit

Press, 23 November 1988, Page 1

Not first time Kiwi hit

NZPA Hong Kong The explosion which seriously injured an Auckland woman on China’s Great Wall on Monday bears remarkable similarities to a blast which injured two other New Zealand tourists in Sian 20 months ago. The Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, was on an official visit to China on March 12, 1987, when a Chinese woman reportedly detonated a hand grenade in an apparent suicide attempt at the Sian railway station. Reports published in Chinese language newspapers in Sian at the time quoted officials as saying the woman was disturbed by a domestic dispute. When the grenade exploded, a former Christchurch coupie, Johnathon and Tracie Ogilvie, were seated at the same table as the woman. Miraculously all three, their bodies pitted by shrapnel, survived the blast. The Ogilvies were visited by Mr and Mrs Palmer soon after undergoing emergency surgery at a Sian hospital. They were treated later in Christchurch During the visit, the Deputy Governor of Shaanxi Province, Xu Shanlin, stood at the New Zealanders’ bedsides. According to an April, 1987, report in the pro-Peking Hong Kong based newspaper "Wen Wei Po,” the woman was executed During his 1987 visit Mr Palmer was at pains to emphasise — on one occasion at a banquet put on by Governor Zhang of Shaanxi Province — that New Zealand did not blame the People’s Republic for the Sian blast.