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China deport

Greenpeace

activists

BEIJING: China deported senior activists from the world environmental group Greenpeace on Wednesday after they pulled off a brazen but brief protest in Tiananmen Square demanding that Beijing end nuclear testing. The Greenpeace national directors from France and Russia, Penelope Komites and Sasha Knorre, were put aboard an Air France flight to Paris, airline officials said. Four other activists detained for joining Tuesday's brief protest in Beijing's huge central square were put on an afternoon flight to Hong Kong, officials said. Greenpeace activists interviewed by telephone before their deportation said two contract photographers who were also detained, a German and a Swiss, faced expulsion. Their whereabouts were not immediately known. Police and Foreign Ministry officials would not comment. "Because we signed confessions saying this was our first action in China, they said they would not charge us but would immediately send us out of the country," Komites said. "We had to confess that we held an illegal protest." The protest was timed to coincide with Beijing's rumoured plans to hold a nuclear test in the next seven days and its announcement of missile tests off the east coast near Taiwan, which reportedly began on Tuesday. Greenpeace activists fear nuclear testing by China and France could undermine moves toward a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The other nuclear powers, the United States, Britain and Russia, have halted their testing programmes. The activists' expulsion was likely to defuse a potentially embarrassing incident just weeks before Beijing hosts its biggest international gathering -- the U.N. World Conference on Women -- but also reinforced Beijing's firm stance against dissent. Officials warned on Tuesday that China would not tolerate unauthorised protests by any of the tens of thousands of participants in the women's conference or a parallel forum of grassroots women's groups, whether Chinese or foreign. Greenpeace international executive director Thilo Bode said the eight, who had entered China on tourist visas, were interrogated by police for much of Tuesday and moved to a hotel near Beijing airport late in the evening. They remained under police guard overnight but said they were not mistreated. Five Greenpeace leaders managed to unfurl a bright yellow protest banner in Tiananmen Square demanding that China halt its nuclear testing programme. Within seconds, police ripped the banner down and detained the five and three colleagues, as well as eight foreign reporters whose film and videotape were confiscated. Several Greenpeace activists slipped away and flew out of China and provided television and still images of the protest to international news agencies. A traditional magnet for dissent, Tiananmen has seen few protests since June 1989, when the army crushed student-led pro-democracy demonstrations. Also among those being deported were Ann Dingwall, a Canadian who represents Greenpeace in Britain, Bill Keller, an American who directs its U.S. West Coast office and Harald Zindler, a German, who a longtime Greenpeace leader. Greenpeace identified the photographers as Peter Braun of Germany and Duri Mayer of Switzerland.-Reuter