GREENPEACE PROTESTS IMMINENT CHINESE NUCLEAR TESTS WITH PROTEST IN TIANANMEN SQUARE;

Calls On All Nuclear Nations to Halt Testing

BEIJING, 15 August 1995 -- (GP) In the organization's first protest in mainland China, Greenpeace activists, at approximately 8:35 local time today, displayed a banner in Tiananmen Square calling on the Chinese government not to carry out imminent nuclear weapons tests.

90KB GIF or 46KB JPG. Greenpeace activists in Tiananmen Square©Greenpeace.

After displaying the 5-meter banner reading "STOP ALL NUCLEAR TESTING" in both English and Chinese briefly, six Greenpeace activists were surrounded in Tiananmen Square by some 30 military and civilian police and taken into custody. No contact has yet been made with the activists since their arrest.

"Greenpeace believes China's role in this issue is critical and we have gathered activists from all of the other nuclear weapons states along with our international director to send a strong message to the Chinese government and people that further nuclear testing here and anywhere else in the world is unacceptable," said Thilo Bode, incoming Executive Director for Greenpeace International before the protest.

"By conducting nuclear tests now, both China and France threaten to hijack the growing momentum toward a global ban on nuclear testing."

Taking part in the protest were Greenpeace Executive Director Thilo Bode as well as directors from Greenpeace offices in the other four nuclear weapons states (Britain, France, Russia and the US).

In an interview with Asahi Shimbun on Sunday, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said his country would agree to stop nuclear testing when a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), currently being negotiated at the United Nations in Geneva, came into force. But Greenpeace said China must do more to halt testing now, not later, if a CTBT is to be successfully negotiated.

Media reports have said that China is currently making final preparations at its Lop Nor test site to conduct a nuclear weapons test before the end of August. The Lop Nor test site is some 265 kilometres south-east of Urumqi in the Xinjian region. The area has been heavily contaminated by radioactivity released by the tests.

Since its first test in 1964, China is believed to have detonated some 42 nuclear blasts. It is estimated that China has constructed some 450 nuclear weapons deployed as land and submarine-based missile, aircraft-carried gravity bombs, artillery shells and even nuclear demolition munitions.

In all, the power of the accumulated Chinese nuclear arsenal is some 16,000 times greater than that of the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945.

"Continued nuclear tests and weapons development will not make China or any other nation safer or more secure," said Greenpeace's Damon Moglen in Beijing. "It will, instead, create greater regional instability and will justify the efforts of other nations to develop nuclear weapons. Testing now by China, or France, threatens to arrest or even destroy this historical opportunity for a global test ban. The clock must not be turned back now." -end-

Contact: Damon Moglen: +8610-500-5566 x 540 or on mobile +8610-90571-593
Blair Palese, Greenpeace Communications: +44171-833-0600

Those arrested:

Thilo Bode,         German Citizen, Executive Director of Greenpeace
                    International
Anne Dingwall,      Canadian Citizen, Member of Greenpeace UK board
Bill Keller,        US Citizen, Director, Greenpeace USA West Coast
Sasha Knorre,       Russian Citizen, Executive Director Greenpeace
                    Russia
Penelope Komites,   French Citizen, Executive Director Greenpeace
                    France
Harald Zindler      German Citizen, Greenpeace Germany staff.

Fax protest

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