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Relative of US volleyball coach killed in Beijing

A Chinese man stabbed to death the father-in-law of a US Olympic coach in Beijing yesterday in an attack that left two others injured, officials said, raising new fears about security at the Games.

The parents-in-law of the coach and their Chinese guide were attacked as they visited the Drum Tower monument, a popular tourist site in the center of the city, the US Olympic Committee (USOC), Beijing police and a source said.

The assailant, a 47-year-old man, then jumped to his death from the second story of the monument, police said in a statement, without saying why he carried out the attack.

The USOC said the victims were family members of a coach for the US Olympic men’s volleyball team. Beijing police said the person killed was an American man and the two injured were women, one American and one Chinese.

A source said Todd Bachman, father of former Olympian Elisabeth Bachman, was killed. His wife, Barbara, was hospitalized. Elisabeth Bachman is married to volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon.

About 450,000 foreigners are expected to come to Beijing for the Olympics, which opened on Friday night and will finish on Aug. 24.

The killing also happened as US President George W. Bush was in the city to attend the Games and he expressed his condolences.

“The President has been informed and his heart goes out to the families of the victims,” a White House official traveling with Bush said.

Acts of violence against foreigners in Beijing and throughout China are rare, with expatriates happy to wander around the streets of the capital late at night.

Police identified the attacker as Tang Yongming (唐永明) from Hangzhou.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said Tang was an unemployed man who often went to Beijing to air grievances with central government authorities.

ARRESTS

Five foreigners were detained in Tiananmen Square yesterday as pro-Tibet activists kept up their campaign of protests around the Games.

The Free Tibet Campaign said the five activists staged a “mock die-in” draped in Tibetan flags on the north side of the square under the portrait of former leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東).

Xinhua news agency said the five were arrested as they tried to disrupt a lunchtime flag-raising ceremony on the square, sparking an angry reaction from bystanders.

Three foreign activists staged a small demonstration outside Beijing’s National Stadium on Friday before the opening ceremony, while two days earlier another activist unfurled a giant banner nearby.

Free Tibet Campaign identified the five activists as David Demes from Germany, Evan Silverman, Diane Gatterdam and Joan Roney from the US and Chris Schwartz from Canada.

“There were four people lying on the ground, they had fake blood on their faces and were wrapped in Tibetan flags,” John Hocevar, former director of the Students for a Free Tibet, who witnessed the protest, told AFP.

About five minutes into the action a group of angry-looking Chinese men appeared and started shouting at the demonstrators and throwing water bottles at them, hitting one protester on the head, Hocevar said.

The protesters were escorted from the square by plain-clothes police, he said.

DISAPPEARANCE

Meanwhile, a Chinese human rights activist whose husband was jailed earlier this year has disappeared and may have been taken by police to prevent her from speaking to journalists during the Beijing Olympics, an overseas-based human rights group said on Friday.

The group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕) disappeared on Thursday and has not been heard from. Zeng is married to activist Hu Jia (胡佳), who was sentenced to thee and-a-half years in prison in April.

“All attempts to contact her have failed. It is feared that Zeng has been taken into police custody and might be mistreated,” the group said.
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