BEIJING: China called on Sudan on Tuesday to seek urgently the release of 29 Chinese workers held by rebels in the border state of South Kordofan and said it had sent a team of officials to help win their freedom.
The Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng summoned a senior diplomat at Sudan’s embassy in Beijing to deliver the message, the official Xinhua news agency said in a brief bulletin.
The message underscored the pressure that China faces to secure the safe return of the abducted construction workers, as did its announcement earlier on Tuesday that it had sent officials from the Foreign Ministry and other agencies to Sudan the previous day to ‘assist in rescue work’.
The workers’ plight has attracted widespread attention in China and any deaths could become a more serious headache for the government, which Chinese citizens assume can wield its influence to protect nationals abroad.
The abduction is the latest incident dramatising China’s difficulties with companies and workers venturing to dangerous places generally shunned by Western companies.
‘The Chinese side calls on all the parties concerned to exercise calm and restraint,’ a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Weimin, said in the statement announcing the dispatch of the team. (PTI)
‘Ensure the safety of Chinese personnel, and out of humanitarian considerations release them as soon as possible,’ said Liu, in the statement on the ministry website
The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) said it took the 29 workers on Saturday for their own safety after a battle with the Sudanese army.
Since June, the Sudanese army has been fighting the SPLM-N in South Kordofan, which is in Sudan bordering the newly independent country of South Sudan.
There was initially hope that some of workers had been released, after Sudan’s state news agency said the military freed 14 of them.
But yesterdat Chinese and Sudanese officials denied the report. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said 29 of the workers remained in rebel hands while another 17 had reached safety and one was missing. MORE REUTERS DJK VC1615