CHINESE GUARDS BEAT JAPANESE JOURNALISTS

       Chinese authorities assaulted three journalists from a Japanese news agency in their Beijing hotel room, the agency said yesterday, kicking them and destroying two computers.
       The three journalists from Kyodo News were in the Chinese capital covering a National Day rehearsal when authorities stormed into the room of their hotel on Friday night, the news agency said. Kyodo alleged a reporter and two cameramen were kicked "and hit their heads to make them kneel down...", without specifying who the "authorities" were.
       They threw the two computers out of the room and into the corridor of the hotel, which is near Tiananmen Square, the venue of the National Day celebrations scheduled for October 1.
       Yasushi Kato, bureau chief of the Kyodo News Beijing office, said several men stormed into the hotel room after one of the journalists opened the door, but they did ntot identify themselves.
       Kyodo reported they destroyed two computers by throwing them into the corridor. Kato said a reporter and a cameraman were Japanese and the third was a Chinese assistant.
       China's Foreign Ministry had ordered news organisations not to take photos when the country conducted a rehearsal September 6, but the ministry has not issued such an order since then, according to Kyodo.
       Security forces have swarmed over central Beijing in the lead-up to a parade that will mark 60 years since the founding of Communist China.
       Businesses, schools, and traffic shut down as columns of tanks and assorted other military vehicles bearing missiles and an array of other hardware rumbled down the city's deserted mainest-west thoroughtfare, the Avenue of Heavenly Peace, and towards Tiananmen Square.
       Security forces had earlier swarmed over cental Beijing, shooing citizens away from what will be the parade's route through the heart of the city.
       Earlier this week, hundreds of journalists protects in Hong Kong, in southern China, ahainst alleged police brutality towards three of their colleagues covering syringe attacks in China's restive Xinjiang region.
       Around 700 demonstrators, wearing black and holding placards, held a march to call on the Xinjiang govekrnment to apologise to the reporters and demanded Beijing move to stop media repression.