Red Flags Over New Haven

Red and yellow banners, dueling megaphones, meditators and marching band members turned downtown New Haven into a battleground of protest and response Friday as China’s president came to town. The confrontations brought to the surface the global debate underlying Yale’s decision to take the lead among Western universities in embracing the China Miracle.

Chinese President Hu Jintao motorcaded into New Haven for a scheduled 11 a.m. address at Sprague Hall. Hu scheduled three main stops in a whirlwind U.S. tour to visit Bill Gates in Seattle, George W. Bush in Washington, and Yale President Rick Levin in New Haven. The last stop reflected how, under Levin, Yale moved faster than other American universities to establish ties with the world’s fastest-growing industrial nation. Levin’s gambling that engagement is the West’s best strategy for promoting human rights and international cooperation. (Click here to read his latest comments on the subject.)

For additional photos of the street scene, click here. Click here to read about Hu’s speech and here to read about students’ efforts to write anti-Chinese graffiti on Beinecke Plaza.

The raucous protests and counterprotests greeting Hu Friday showed how contentious a debate Levin has thrust Yale into. Helmeted cops sealed off streets and kept thousands of protesters and Chinese advocates to the perimeters of College and Elm streets, Temple and Wall streets, and Grove Street. Only one arrest was reported, when an angry Chinese demonstrator threw a water bottle at an adversary and accidentally struck Lt. Peter Reichard instead, according to police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester.

Yellow ​“Free Tibet” headbands and smocks and banners flowed on the streets alongside the red banners of Chinese government supporters. ​“Welcome President Hu Jintao to the United States” competed for attention with ​“Stop Jian Zenin Exporting Terrorism.” Every block or so the two sides would try to drown each other out, speaking louder, pumping up the music, beating on drums, sometimes yelling in each other’s faces.

Zeqir Berisha wrapped himself in the American flag — literally. He pranced along Elm and College Streets yelling ​“Death to the Communists!” and inviting people to chant ​“USA! USA!”

Berisha, who’s 63, left Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia 37 years ago and came to Waterbury, where he found construction work until his retirement. He marched across College Street to a retinue of red flag-waving Chinese government men.

“USA! Commie bastard! Stupid!” Berisha yelled into the face of Ming Eng (shown in the second photo at the top of this article). Eng picked up his megaphone and unleashed a stream of responses at Berisha — in Chinese.

Supporters of the Falun Gong, a religious organization group banned in China, waved banners, distributed newspapers and spoke through megaphones about the persecution of group members. Some, like Dai Zhi Zhen, shown here with her six year-old daughter Chen Fa Du, traveled from as far as Sydney Australia, to protest Hu.

Dai, who’s 43, said the Chinese government murdered her husband, Chen Chengyong. ​“He went to Beijing and handed a letter to the Chinese government: ​‘Falun Gong is good. Stop the killing. Stop the persecution.’ They arrested him. They tortured him until he was killed.

“A quarter of a million children became orphans because their parents were killed. I fly all the way here. I want to say: Help us stop the killing. Give the children a normal life.’”

Another Chinese refugee who came to New Haven from Sydney, with a detour to protest Hu’s D.C. visit, was Joseph Mack. Mack, an engineer, said his family fled Shanghai in the early ​’50s after Mao came to power. ​“I saw the executions of lots of people,” he said.

On College Street Friday, Mack distributed copies of a newspaper he writes for called The Epoch Times. It included a front-page story about the Chinese government harvesting organs from Falun Gong supporters in a prison camps and covering up the ​“labor camp slaughter.”

The Band Plays On

Across the street a Chinese government marching band set up on the Green beside a phalanx of Falun Gong supporters blaring recorded music.

Cheering on the band was a 39 year-old who gave his name as Wenhung and said he’s a Yale medical student. ​“They tell lies,” he said of the protesters. ​“Most of the supporters don’t know the truth about the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong try to control other people’s minds. It’s a cult. They get crazy.”

Does he believe the Chinese government has arrested and persecuted any of the group’s members?

“Maybe a few. A few errors maybe happened.”

The band, meanwhile, packed up and travelled two blocks north to the corner of Wall and Temple streets. There it waded into a wave of Falun Gong and Free-Tibet protesters covering the sidewalk and, against the gentle but firm push of city cops, half of the street itself.

As the band struck up a number, two Falun Gong protesters stopped inches from their faces. They held placards detailing murders of dissidents during the Cultural Revolution and today. A drummer (in picture) skipped a beat, stepped forward toward one of the placard-bearers, and spit on the sidewalk by her feet. Then she stepped back and resumed the rhythm.