42 held for protest property damage
By Cao Li in Shanghai ？and Bao Xinyan in Nanjing (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-04-27 06:16

Forty-two protesters were arrested for damaging property in anti-Japanese demonstrations in Shanghai on April 16, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau revealed on Monday.

Sixteen will be prosecuted and the other 26 remain in detention.

The 42 suspects were said to have attacked Japanese shops and restaurants during the protest, which was attended by up to 20,000 people angry at Japan's passing of a controversial history textbook.

The Ministry of Public Security appealed for calm earlier this month after anti-Japanese demonstrations broke out in Beijing and Shanghai, in hopes the public could express their patriotism in a more restrained and sensible manner.

The ministry asked people not to attend any unauthorized demonstrations or protests, nor spread messages that might instigate such events.

Yin Xiufeng, a physical education teacher from a Shanghai university, was accused of damaging signposts and a Japanese restaurant on Xianxia Road, not far from the Japanese Consulate-General, and instigating others into breaking a police line.

Ma Lanjing, an official from the Shanghai Public Security Bureau, said his office was further investigating the violence and hunting suspects, and asked those that were involved to come forward.

Ma revealed that the city is preparing measures to prevent such protests in the future, but refused to release any details.

In another development on Monday, a netizen in Yangzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, was detained by local police for attempting to instigate an anti-Japanese demonstration and bombings in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province, during the upcoming May Day holiday.

Sources from the Jiangsu Provincial Public Security Bureau said the suspect, surnamed Xia, was caught by Yangzhou police last Thursday and will be detained for about a month.

"Xia is suspected to have compiled and spread false and horrible information via the Internet," said Shen Gongxuan, spokesman for the bureau.

According to the spokesman, on the evening of April 20, Xia tried to encourage fellow netizens to hold a demonstration on May 1, as well as bomb a number of cars in Yangzhou.

(China Daily 04/27/2005 page3)

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