Train blast ‘sabotage’

Press, 28 June 1989, Page 10

Train blast ‘sabotage’

NZPA-Reuter Peking A dynamite charge exploded on a crowded train near Shanghai, killing 20 people in what Chinese officials said yesterday was deliberate sabotage which diplomats warned could justify further repression. Eleven passengers were seriously injured in the blast near midnight on board a passenger train heading for China’s biggest city from Hangzhou, the New China News Agency said. Officials said the blast was still being investigated.

“It was a deliberate act of sabotage,” an official at Shanghai’s Foreign Affairs Office told reporters.

There is so far no clear link between the explosion and China’s political turmoil — but diplomats

said the authorities could use it to justify further stern measures. “Whether or not this was caused by underground sympathisers of the democracy movement, it provides an ideal pretext for yet another turn of the screw,” one Western diplomat said. “It’s a very disturbing development ... It could also affect business and tourist ' confidence in China’s much-heralded return to normal.” China is already under a barrage of world criticism for its Army crackdown on unarmed prodemocracy protesters in central Peking and its subsequent pitiless repression of dissent. At least 10 people have been executed in recent days for alleged offences during and after the military action.