Foreign and Military Affairs
Two flights take Chinese back home from Kyrgyzstan
By Qin Jize (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-15 08:08
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BEIJING - The government dispatched two chartered flights on Monday to save Chinese nationals from the ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan.
About 600 Chinese citizens have registered with the Chinese embassy to board the China Southern Airlines flights back home, an official with the embassy surnamed Liu said on Monday.
Liu Hong, deputy Chinese military attache with the embassy, told Xinhua News Agency that the Kyrgyzstan military will use armored vehicles to escort Chinese citizens to the Osh airport.
The second flight, of the same model, arrived in Osh about 11 pm and was scheduled to fly back to Urumqi at 2 am, Xinhua reported.
Members of a working group sent by the Foreign Ministry arrived in Osh Monday evening to coordinate the repatriation.
Two more flights are scheduled to be dispatched Tuesday.
There have been no reports so far of casualties among Chinese nationals in the ethnic violence, which has left at least 124 people dead and 1,500 injured.
Some businesses owned by Chinese nationals in Osh have been looted, and the Chinese ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Wang Kaiwen, has urged Chinese nationals to stay at home.
Gu Ping, another official at the embassy, said a Chinese-run glass shop and an oil factory were raided, causing losses worth millions of US dollars.
A Chinese businessman in Osh, Wang Xiuyin, told Xinhua that all main streets in Osh were being guarded by heavily armed police and soldiers.
But tensions remained high as crowds of Kyrgyz youth were still roaming the streets, he said, adding that many Chinese in Osh want to return home.
The number of Chinese living in Kyrgyzstan has been growing since the late 1980s. Embassy statistics show about 30,000 Chinese people are living in the country. More than 7,000, mostly businessmen, are in the violence-hit region.
On the outskirts of the capital Bishkek, there is a large Chinese market, described as a "city within a city," which has a hospital, mosques and apartment buildings.
Migrants from China also work in the construction sector, especially on housing projects for low-income people.
