U.S. Consulate Building Set Ablaze
By Renee Schoof
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, May 8, 1999; 11:48 p.m. EDT
BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese protesters broke into and
severely burned a U.S. consulate building in southwest China, an Embassy
spokesman said Sunday.
A large number of people broke into the consulate
compound in Chengdu and severely burned the consulate general's
residence, said Tom Cooney, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing.
No U.S. staff were injured and Chinese police used tear
gas to disperse the crowd, he said.
Cooney also said that U.S. officials in Beijing, where
the
Embassy was surrounded by protesters for the second day
Sunday, were not getting adequate protection.
``We feel that we are under a state of siege here. We
don't
have adequate security,'' he said. He said the embassy
had
made a strong protest to Chinese authorities Saturday to
provide better protection.
``We don't have the ability to move between our
buildings
like we should,'' Cooney said.
Cooney said there were no Americans known to have been
hurt in the protests in Beijing and elsewhere. All U.S.
diplomatic offices in China, except in Hong Kong, would
be closed Monday and Tuesday, he said.
The communist government generally bans protests for
fear they will escalate into unrest. But officials apparently felt that
stopping people from publicly expressing outrage over
the
embassy bombing could further inflame them and possibly
turn emotions against the government.
Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency reported four
people were killed when NATO missiles struck the Chinese
Embassy in Belgrade on Saturday, but Yugoslav media
reports later lowered the death toll to three.
More than 20 were injured and one person was missing,
China's state-run Xinhua News Agency said. A Xinhua
reporter and two reporters for a national newspaper,
Guangming Daily, were killed, it said.
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said NATO forces mistakenly
hit the embassy with ``precision guided munitions.'' He said NATO
offered ``sincere regrets'' to Chinese authorities.
On Saturday, U.S. officials in Beijing advised staff and
other Americans in the Chinese capital ``to raise their security
awareness,'' said spokesman Bill Palmer. An embassy notice
said there was ``the possibility for acts of retaliation
against
Americans and American interests worldwide.''
Students said they were outraged because they believed
NATO intentionally targeted the Belgrade structure.
Protesters at the Chengdu consulate scaled walls, broke
windows in the break-in Saturday night, he said. Police
dispersed the crowd only after they had ransacked the
building, he said.
``It was scary and there was a lot of damage,'' he said.
Protesters in Beijing hurled rocks and lumps of concrete
at
embassy buildings and cars in Beijing on Saturday and
Sunday in the protests over NATO's accidental bombing of
the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia.
Not since the government crushed democracy protests at
Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, have students and
other Chinese marched through Beijing streets in large numbers with
banners and slogans.
The march came after protesters attacked the U.S. and
British embassies in Beijing with chunks of concrete
Saturday, smashing windows and cars.
Police pushed back demonstrators who tried to ram a van
and hurl a burning American flag through the U.S. Embassy's
main gate. The crowd of 1,000 protesters smashed up
squares of concrete that had been left in piles by
workers
rebuilding sidewalks and hurled them at both the U.S.
and
British compounds.
Windows at the American compound were broken, and at
least four cars belonging to staff members were smashed.
A group of protesters tried to ignite one car and then started
shoving police who stopped them.
Early Sunday, another wave of buses -- apparently
arranged by universities -- arrived with more students. Hundreds of
police regulated the flow of protesters but did not stop
the
demonstrations. Signs Sunday along the protest route
showed demonstrators which way to march.
Protests also were held Saturday in Shanghai, Guangzhou,
and Hong Kong.
The demonstrations in Guangzhou, a large city in
southern
China, involved tens of thousands of students from more
than 10 universities who converged on the U.S., British, French,
Italian and Dutch consulates, the state-run Xinhua News
Agency reported.
China's entirely state-controlled news media have
heavily
reported civilian casualties from the NATO strikes, but
have not reported on attacks by Yugoslav forces on ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo.
China has its own restive ethnic regions and fears NATO
has set a dangerous precedent by attacking a sovereign nation
without U.N. authorization.
In Beijing, the protests began with well-organized ranks
of
student demonstrators and later turned into a rowdy mob
that threw rocks and tried to set cars on fire. State-run television
news reported the protest, a sign the government
sanctioned it.
Police stood in cordons at least six people deep in
front of the main embassy building to keep crowds back. Demonstrators
broke through at least once.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
