Worker steals the show

Press, 2 June 1989, Page 6

Worker steals the show

NZPA-Reuter Peking A chubby female textile worker broadcasting from a filthy tent in a corner of Tiananmen Square stole the show as the ear-piercing battle for central Peking’s airwaves hit a new pitch.

Ever since students began their occupation of the Square on May 13, their makeshift speaker system rigged up under the central Monument to the People’s Heroes has kept up a stream of demands for democracy and freedom.

Tl|e Government has

fought back with powerful megaphones around the Square belting out the official communist line.

A new station sprang up on Wednesday in the north-west corner of the Square, snatching the limelight with perhaps the most vitriolic insults to the Government yet, to applause and laughter from a delighted crowd.

A thousand listeners roared approval as the announcer chanted, “Arrest Li Peng. Send him to jail. Arrest Li Peng. Overthrow Li

Li Peng is the Prime Minister. “This is the voice of the workers of Peking,” said Zhao Pinglu, a leader of the illegal Peking Workers Autonomous Federation. “When this demonstration is over, we will definitely be arrested,” he said. Such criticisms as those broadcast on the Square, just out of earshot of the Zhongnanhai complex where communist leaders live and work, are unprecedented in China since the Communists took power in 1949.