Man dived for cover as soldiers fired

Press, 12 June 1989, Page 8

Man dived for cover as soldiers fired

PA Hastings A Hastings man who dodged bullets in Peking returned home yesterday with little more than the

clothes he stood up in. Alex Young’s six-month working stint in the Chinese capital came to an abrupt end last week when the New Zealand Embassy telephoned his hotel and told him he had better pack and leave.

Mr Young’s daughter, Lana Tian, aged 27, and her 10-month-old son, Alan, had not long joined him for a holiday when they were advised to leave China. By then soldiers with semi-automatic weapons were firing at crowds of people. Mr Young, aged 59, who had been working at the Social Sciences Academy in Peking, said he dived for cover behind a flower bed as soldiers sprayed the crowd he was in with bullets. “They just opened fire and went mad. There were pools of blood and bodies and people rushing to get away.”

Asked if he had come close to being hit himself, Mr Young said, “I was just another human being to fire at.” New Zealanders would have difficulty imagining what it was like to be among a mass of people who were suddenly subjected to fire from automatic weapons. The numbers killed would never be known, he said.

“Many of them were squashed by tanks and then the bodies were bulldozed into a heap and collected.”

Mr Young had intended working at the academy until December. But with the deteriorating situation in Peking he took the embassy’s advice to leave. However, his daughter had been caught up in the emotional turmoil and said she wanted to stay. Her husband’s parents and some of her friends live in Peking.

“I think she felt she would be running away.” Mr Young said he argued with his daughter as guns boomed on the other side of the capital. Mrs Tian told him the

tanks and the shooting was some distance away and that they were safe. “She wasn't being rational. After a long discussion I took responsibil-

ity for my daughter and her son — I was not going to let emotion dictate at a time like that,” Mr Young said.

They fled in a taxi along with two other New Zealanders — Mervyn Cull and his wife. Mr Cull is a former press secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, and had also been working in Peking. They reached a temporary New Zealand Embassy and from there departed with other New Zealanders for Peking's airport, in vehicles draped with New Zealand flags. Mr Young said he doubted if China would ever return to the way of life it had known before the bloody protests. But in the long term, China would benefit. “The young people are asking for the freedom to live as individual human beings. They are the new generation and they will succeed.”