MonitoRadio Daily Program; [1989-06-09]

From Boston, this is Monitor Radio, a broadcast service of the Christian Science Monitor. I'm Marty Haas, coming up on this Friday, June 9th, an uneasy calm settles on Beijing, demonstrators gather in New York and teaching religion in schools. Those stories just ahead on Monitor Radio right after a summary of the day's news with Lisa Watts. El Salvador's chief of state has been assassinated. Jose Rodriguez' port was shot and killed by suspected leftist guerrillas today, as he was driving through the capital city of San Salvador. His driver and bodyguard were also killed. At the U .S. Embassy in San Salvador, public affairs officer Barry Jacobs said the terrorists were acting out of desperation. This is one more brutal act of terrorism that we condemn and that we think just proves the bankruptcy of those groups who have not been able to come to power via the ballot. Rodriguez' port was sworn in last week in the new right -wing

government of President Alfredo Cristiani. The streets now belong to the troops, tanks that crushed student -led demonstrations roared out of Tiananmen Square in Beijing today, after senior leader Deng Chaoping made a dramatic reappearance on television. He praised the troops who ended the protest as being China's Great Wall of Iron and Steel. Correspondent Louise Branson, who's staying on the outskirts of Tiananmen Square, described the scene as tanks moved out. I just watched 75 tanks in a procession leaving Tiananmen Square, so it appears that the government is confident enough that it can impose martial law without the tanks. In fact, today, some new orders were issued. No cars are allowed on the street after nightfall, so it's a very eerie feeling right now. There is absolutely no sound around my apartment, whereas nearly a week there's been sporadic gunfire, heavy artillery fire tanks. Now there's nothing. Out of the universities and 8pm

curfew has been announced. Anybody violating that will be dealt with on the thoughts the authorities say, which is very ominous, and there are reports of widespread arrests of students going on, as well as intellectuals. China's hardliners have been rounding up the leaders of the pro -democracy movement in a curfew has been set. But in Shanghai, student activists said they would try to regroup there. Today about 50 ,000 demonstrators marched in that city. Meanwhile, the White House today denounced, as repugnant, calls by Chinese officials for reprisals against student leaders at the pro -democracy demonstrations. Despite the reappearance of Chinese leaders in public, White House spokesman Marlon Fitzwater said it's still not clear who ordered the killing of civilian demonstrators in Tiananmen Square last weekend. In other news, in the Southern Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan today, a mob of up to 5 ,000 people armed with automatic rifles and pistols stormed the center of the Uzbek -town co -canned 100 people suffered gunshot wounds.

The attack came on the sixth day of ethnic unrest between rival Uzbek and Turkish Muslim groups. A Soviet pilot who defected to Turkey last month in a MiG -29 jet fighter was flown to the United States today after U .S. authorities agreed to grant him asylum. An Istanbul newspaper reported today that the pilot defected because he feared President Mikhail Gorbachev's social and economic reforms would drive the Soviet Union into a civil war. At the confidence and security building measure talks in Vienna today, NATO presented to the Soviet Union and other Warsaw -packed countries details on how all 35 NATO countries should eliminate secrecy in military affairs if QN reports. A NATO document presented at a meeting today asked for more openness on military matters. They want more information exchange about combat units, troop formations, and military maneuvers taking place here in Europe. John Mariska, the U .S. delegation said the time has come to share information between NATO, non -align, and the Warsaw -packed

countries. Opinence helps to enhance security, he said, and reduce suspicion. Opinence is a good thing, he said, just like it is between governments. The message today here in Vienna is transparency by more contact. For manager radio, this is Eve Curin in Vienna. Meanwhile, NATO defense ministers also meeting in Vienna pledged to keep Western defenses strong, while pursuing a deal with the Soviet bloc to slash troops, tanks, and aircraft in Europe. For the second time in four months, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's actions in the occupied Arab territories. The United States said the draft supported by the other 14 members of the council was unbalanced. And Burma's military government announced today it will retain power in that country until an elected parliament writes a new constitution, a process that one diplomat said could take years. That's a look at the top stories for monitor

radio, I'm Lisa Watts. Dozens of tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled out of Tiananmen Square today, seeming to indicate that life in Beijing was slowly returning to normal. Also today, the appearance of senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping on China's national television finally ended the rumors of his death. In his first appearance since mid -May, Deng praised the troops who put down what he called a counter -revolutionary rebellion. I asked the Christian Science Monitor's Beijing correspondent Jim Tyson if the appearance of Deng and Premier Li Pung signaled the beginning of stabilization in China. In the short term, I think it does. It shows that at least in the initial fracas, the conservatives have one out. They have pushed out Zhao Zeyong and his associates, Lu Chi -Li, and

others in the leadership. So it provides a certain degree of reassurance that amid the recent chaos, the conservatives have taken some sort of control of the government, and even though their aims are inimical to those of people who are striving for democracy, the struggle that was going on among the military reflecting the struggle in the upper leadership between conservatives and moderates may end itself. So are you saying we can assume a further period of repression of pro -democratic voices then? Yes, I think so. The underlying causes of the recent repression haven't been solved. The leadership still hasn't come up with any clear program for how it will give Chinese basic liberties, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the liberties that the students were demanding, nor has it come up with a program of how it can crack down in corruption and profiteering and nepotism. The other points that the students have demanded and that workers had rallied around. So while there is this short -term stability, these underlying problems still exist

and they should continue to make Chinese politically active and resentful. One of those underlying problems might be China's relationship with the US. In fact, President Bush, speaking in a news conference here in the United States, said there can't be totally normal relations with China until the government recognizes the rights of students and he rejected the idea of further sanctions. How are these signals being received there in Beijing? Well, Beijing is very indignant. They signaled that the US is interfering in China's internal affairs. They don't really say exactly how just a US comment can actually affect domestic politics here. Perhaps their strongest statements have been in the US embassy here, granting refuge to leading Chinese dissident, fondly juror, and they've said that this is a breach of international law of common

diplomatic practice. They've strongly announced the US for giving this astrophilicist and very outspoken champion of human rights, the sanctuary. Jim Thursday and Friday were very calm days and things seem to be fairly normal from this perspective. Are you looking ahead to more of this this weekend or are underlying tensions there that could surface and bubble up again? Well, I think things will continue to become. Of course, I've thought that before during the course of the seven -week democracy movement and proven wrong, it has been so unpredictable. But in one area of potential conflict and trouble that of the military struggle, there are signs that maybe the army has started to smooth over differences within its own ranks. There's an intersection just near my compound where for a number of days, there were a number of battle tanks and armored personnel carriers. Those were withdrawn recently, and today

at that intersection in the flyover there was just regular traffic, no military vehicles at all. However, I think any type of crackdown, any type of repression now will go from the streets into the homes of Chinese intellectuals, students who weren't killed and end workers who weren't killed in the recent crackdown. I think the massive Chinese security police force will probably start rounding up these activists and hauling them in for a rest. The Christian science monitors Beijing correspondent Jim Tyson. Over 20 ,000 people took to the streets in New York City today. They gathered in the pouring rain at the United Nations to protest China's crackdown on pro -democracy students. The crowd of mainly Chinese Americans saying, we shall overcome as they walk through the streets of Manhattan's Chinatown before massing in front of the UN. Monitor Radio's Danny Lyric reports from New York.

Despite the pouring rain, thousands of angry protesters turned up today to voice their outrage in the first major demonstration in New York City involving primarily Chinese Americans. May Ying Chen closed her restaurant in Maot Street so that she could take part in the rally. We are in mourning for the hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who were killed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square last week. As Chinese community people, we're sad to see the turmoil in our home country and we hope that peace and unity can be restored. A sea of people under umbrellas made their way from Chinatown to the United Nations in a scene that looked more like something from mainland than New York City and the array of groups that came together ranged from newly arrived working class immigrants to young American -born professionals. This wide cross -section of New York City's Chinese community surprised even Peter Lee, the

coordinator of today's rally. What the Chinese government did in Beijing in Tiananmen Square is caused a sense of outrage among all Chinese. So no matter what your political beliefs or what your differences are, on this issue there is only one sentiment you can feel and that is a sense of outrage and everyone come together on this one regardless if they support the mainland government or the nationalist government in Taiwan or if they don't like each other but they all want to come together for this one cause. According to Peter Lee, the Chinese community in New York City has been torn between its allegiance to Beijing and its arch rival, a Taiwan government, but ever since the student uprising these two opposing sectors of the community have been speaking the same language. Today's rally which started in Chinatown ended at the United Nations where protesters joined hunger strikers who have

been camping outside the U .N. since Monday. Why have you located yourself across the street from the United Nations? Because we are demanding the United Nations to take some action to help the Chinese people just to help our counterparts in Beijing. Wang Xiu -jin is one of 26 Chinese Americans who have been fasting for five days now. According to Jin, hunger strikers are demanding an immediate U .N. Security Council meeting held to discuss the turmoil in China whether they get that meeting remains to be seen. But as one hunger striker says, today's show of support means that all those deaths in China will not be wasted. For Monitor Radio, I'm Danny Larica in New York City. You're listening to Monitor Radio, a broadcast service of the Christian Science Monitor American Public Radio. I'm Madi Haas. In recent years, the U .S. military has become

increasingly involved in the effort to keep illegal drugs from crossing our borders. Much of that effort has been through airborne detection. In the past decade, the Coast Guard and Custom Service have spent more than 900 million dollars constructing high -tech interdiction barriers using radar planes and sophisticated balloons to catch drug smugglers along the U .S. Southern border. But a recent general accounting office study of airborne detection says the systems have technical flaws that render them useless much of the time. The GAO recommends that Congress reconsider funding or at least divert some money to more traditional drug interdiction efforts. Monitor Radio's Ken Barkas has more from Washington. GAO division director Arnold Jones and his staff have been studying the air drug defense system for the past year and a half. Signing a preliminary report released today, Jones told the Senate Committee that current air drug interdiction programs might not be worth the money Congress is spending. We're not convinced that spending additional, additional millions of dollars to expand air addiction

programs is the best use of increasingly scarce resources that are being made available for federal and drug efforts. While air interdiction efforts are credited for seizing more than 50 tons of cocaine and marijuana in 1987, Jones says that hardly made a dent in what reached the streets. The retail price of cocaine is the lowest it's been in years and the quality is the highest with cocaine testing 70 to 80 percent pure. While customs tried to intercept more than 1400 suspect aircraft in the past two years, only 335 were ever caught. Less than half of those were found to have drugs aboard, highlighting a limitation with air detection. The radar might be able to find the plane, but it can't determine what's inside. The strategy is to use a variety of aircraft including AWACS and other radar planes. The military also depends on aerostats, large radar -carrying balloons that float on tethers 10 to 15 ,000 feet in the air.

They currently float in the skies above South Florida, the Bahamas and the U .S.-Mexican border. Arnold Jones says the aerostats, which can cost as much as $22 million each, have significant limitations. There are maintenance problems, there are weather problems. There are problems about identification. What I'm talking about is that across the board, they're just inherent technical limitations on the ability to affect a 100 percent ceiling off of the borders from airborne drug smugglers. There's a lot of money at stake. Spending on air drug interdiction has risen from 18 million in 1982 to more than 200 million this year. Army General Thomas Kelly coordinates the military drug effort for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The current plan calls for expanding the existing aerostat force from less than five to 16. A plan that General Kelly strongly supports. If you're going to put up a fence, the fence isn't very valid until you get the whole fence up because they keep coming through the

holes. General Kelly says that when the radar systems are fully operational, they can be very effective in keeping drugs muggling planes from crossing the border. When we turn the radars on, they have fuzz busters in their airplanes, they just turn around and don't come in. Now that's good news and bad news. The bad news is we didn't catch them, but the good news is they didn't try to come in. As you begin to put a fence like this up, you limit their options. I think you increase their cost of doing business and you also reduce the area that you have to cover in the future. And you divert the drug trade to other modes of transportation. Experts say an increasing amount of drugs are getting into the US via commercial ships. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn says Congress is still deciding just where to put its drug interdiction dollars. And he knows that taxpayers expect results. The average person doesn't have time to worry about whether it's the military, the custom service or the Coast Guard. He's not particularly interested in whether government uses aerostats, P3s or E2Cs or AWACs. The

bottom line says Nunn is whether federal drug interdiction efforts can keep illegal drugs off the streets, out of the schools and off the playgrounds. While Congress awaits a sweeping plan being drafted by drug control policy director William Bennett, it will continue to try to determine which interdiction efforts are pie in the sky and which are most effective. For monitor radio, I'm Ken Barkas in Washington. America's attitudes and beliefs are constantly changing and evolving. One of the main reasons for that is the steady influx of millions of new immigrants who are more likely to be Muslim or Buddhist or animist or something other than Christian or Jewish. A number of educators, unions and other interest groups are now saying that it's time to teach religion and school in the interest of religious liberty. The monitors and collier reports that instruction in religion is different from

religious instruction. What are some of the fundamentals of Christianity? We had to summarize the message of Jesus maybe in two words. What would those two words be? Okay, the golden rule. Okay. Robert Dilzer has no qualms teaching about religion in a public school classroom. He's been doing this for nearly 20 years. After the resurrection of Jesus, what Christians believe to be the resurrection of Jesus, the acts of the apostles tell us that the apostles were very frightened. What he's doing is constitutional because Mr. Dilzer is not teaching religion. He's teaching about religion and along with Christianity, he also teaches about Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in one of the most popular courses at Newtown High in Connecticut. It's a course to make students aware that religion exists and that religion is an important influence on human history and culture without, in any way, pressing them to accept

religion. What Dilzer is doing is becoming widely accepted. Three states have decided to require the inclusion of religious topics and social studies classes and many other states are considering it. Conservatives and liberals are calling for better textbook treatment of religion and new curricula for teachers out of concern the subjects been ignored too long. After the Supreme Court banned school prayer in 1963, even the discussion of religion in the classroom began to disappear. Teachers avoided the subject and so did textbooks. Now more than 20 years later, some educators are pointing out that while the Supreme Court had struck down school prayer, it upheld the right to teach about religion. Charles Haines is with the Americans United Research Foundation in Washington, DC. He has spent the past four years explaining this issue and building a consensus on it. For the first time in history, you have people from all the various religions

and education groups saying this is how religion can be treated in the schools, agreeing. And we have support from the National Association of Evangelicals on one side and from the National Education Association on the other. I think that people are paying lip service to the rhetoric of including religion without considering all of the very real problems that one will encounter. Barry Lynn is with the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU, he says, is not entirely against having religious topics discussed in classrooms, but is concerned that some teachers could use classes to sway students toward a particular faith. Charles Haines with the Research Foundation is aware of these problems. People are afraid that teachers are going to proselytize, but I find that far more than the teacher who proselytizes, we have many more teachers who are afraid and don't want to say anything at all. In seminars across the country, Haines helps teachers deal with both the fears and the biases as they learn how to

treat religion as an academic subject. One state that's decided to require this of its teachers is North Carolina. The North Carolina State Board of Education wants teachers to do the kind of thing and Hartsel's been doing all along. Hartsel teaches at Walter Williams High School in Burlington, North Carolina. I always incorporated the role of religion in politics because when you teach American history, there's no way to escape that. What is it you're going to do about their faith in the interest of human relations if you want to call that foreign policy? Is that foreign policy relating? It's not saying you've got to be with them and pray with them five times a day, but you've got to say they're not extremists. They're normal people just like us. It's just their their ways of different. They're just a little bit different enough. Some teachers who take this approach say it's not only a matter of teaching social studies properly. It's also a matter of figuring out how to live in an increasingly diverse country again and Hartsel. If I do not appreciate you as a Buddhist or as a Jew or as a

Muslim or as a member of a person who believes in Taoism, then how can we live peaceably in this country or in the world together? It's a delicate experiment, but if teachers can avoid the pitfalls, there may continue to be much more talk of religion in public school classrooms. For Monitor Radio, I'm Ann Collier in Burlington, North Carolina. The man behind a young tennis pro right after Lisa Watts updates the headlines. The White House says it's still hoping to get a telephone call from China. President Bush is waiting to hear from Beijing senior leadership to determine exactly who's in charge of the chaotic situation there. An international AIDS conference ended in Montreal today on an optimistic note, and scientists still say prevention is the best weapon against AIDS. The U .S. Senate passed a bill today

aimed at aiding Vietnam veterans who were exposed to age and orange, and higher -car and food costs sent wholesale prices soaring, nine -tenths of a percent after a two -month low. On Wall Street, the Dow fell three -and -a -half points, closing at 2513 .42, big -board volume 175 million shares. I'm Lisa Watts. I think I play as three major roles. I play kind of a Michael's father, a Michael's friend, and also Michael's advisor in many different areas. Joe Chang is a proud father. His son, Michael, will be playing in the finals of the French Open Tennis Championships this Sunday. It's been a tournament of dramatic surprises, none more so than Chang's defeat of the number one seed Yvonne Lendel earlier this week. The 17 -year -old Chang comes from a closely -knit family which includes his Chinese parents and his older brother, Carl. The monitors Kim Shippey had an opportunity to talk with Joe Chang about his family and his sons move to the top echelon of men's tennis. Now, how good do you think he is? I know it's difficult

for a parent to have to comment on this, but how do you rate Michael in the international sphere of tennis? I think in terms of a tennis skill, he really divides tennis into a couple of different areas. I think he has a really good ground -stroke baseline game as good as anyone, but he needs to improve on his serve because he's just not strong enough to serve powerfully, so he needs a lot of the physical conditioning training. But the other area, the mental toughness part, I think it might be as tough as anyone out there on the tour. Now, what about family life? I imagine your family life round about Michael plays quite an important part in his experience. At this moment, I think we sacrifice our family life for Michael's development because my wife traveled with Michael all the time. I think we

reach to a certain level of accomplishment. Somebody has to sacrifice to certain point. And what about his elder brother, Carl, how has he taken Michael's success? I think we always try to teach our kids, say, hey, you're only two brothers in this whole world with them blood, so I'll try to make them to be able to be a good friend of an undergraduate. So I think Carl realized there is only one out of a million Michael Changs, so I think he's really happy for his brother's success, but Carl also contribute to mentally to Michael's success, because I think in a way, Michael's lucky to have a brother to practice day in day out for the last 10 years. Are you going to be able to keep him away from those temptations of greed, you know, the big money and the threat of burnout, and even I hesitate to mention these drugs? How are you controlling those things in someone so young? I think when you mention temptations,

there are different ways of temptation. One is the money temptations. I think every time as a professional tennis player, especially Michael at this stage, every time you step on a call, you make a lot of money, and we are able to resist temptation to our schedule Michael with a very selective schedule, this way we don't overburden him, don't burn him out, and other temptations like a drug or other stuff. I think Michael is a good Christian and he started Bible every day, and he knows how to distinguish what is right or what is wrong. See, from our experience, we never tried to isolate Michael from all the bad or from the good. We try to teach him how to distinguish them by himself. That was Joe Chang, the father of tennis player Michael Chang, speaking with the monitors Kim Shippee. On Sunday, Michael goes up against Defon Edberg of Sweden in the finals. If Chang wins, he will become

the first American to win at the French Open in 34 years. And that's it for monitor radio for this Friday, June 9th. We'll talk with you again from Boston. Thanks for listening. I'm Maddie Haas, and this is the American Public Radio Network.