Posted on 01/19/2005 8:20:46 PM PST by wk4bush2004
BEIJING (Reuters) - Families of eight Chinese labourers being held hostage by militants in Iraq have pleaded for their safe return before a threatened deadline to execute the men, all driven abroad by poverty.
Iraqi insurgents on Tuesday threatened to kill the hostages within 48 hours if China, a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, failed to explain why the workers were apparently building facilities for the Americans.
Chinese President Hu Jintao has urged officials in Iraq to spare no effort to free the eight and expressed deep concern over their fate.
The saga has been splashed over newspaper front pages for two days and has gripped the country.
Nowhere has the drama gripped more firmly than in their poor, rural home county of Pingtan in the southeastern province of Fujian, where state media speculated that "snakeheads" -- human traffickers -- played a hand in their arrival in Iraq.
"I just hope our government can get them out safely. I'm so worried," the mother of hostage Zhou Sunqin was quoted by the China Daily as saying, weeping and hardly able to utter a complete sentence.
"I didn't want my son to work in those places, but we're so helpless ... he had nothing to do here," she said. Her son, whose passport gave his age as 17, is the youngest hostage.
Wei Wu, 19, from Aowang village, left behind a brother and sister in search of any work to support his family who, like others in the village, scrape by on a meagre income from sweet potatoes and peanuts, the only crops the land can sustain.
"I only make 200 yuan a month as a maid. And we have five mouths to feed," the newspaper quoted his mother, Xue Jinjiao, as saying. "This is all we have from a year of hard labour," she sobbed, pointing to two bags of sweet potatoes.
STRONG PRESENCE
State media said many members of the village had sought work abroad, many through the mediation of snakeheads, whose presence is strong in Fujian. Many left behind by China's economic boom succumb to the lure of jobs overseas.
Seven Chinese freed in another Iraqi kidnapping case last April were also from Fujian, as were 20 migrants who drowned last year while picking cockles on the northwest coast of Britain.
The prices charged by snakeheads varies with destination, state media said. Japan can cost 80,000 yuan, Singapore 50,000 yuan and Iraq -- the destination of the poorest -- costs 30,000 yuan.
Beijing sent officials to contact mediators on Wednesday, hoping to secure the release of the hostages with the aid of the Iraq Muslim Presbytery, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The same organisation played a key role in freeing the seven Chinese hostages last April, Xinhua said.
China's ambassador in Iraq appealed for their freedom in a plea on the popular Arab channel, Al Arabiya, saying his country has always sought to safeguard the interests of Iraq's people.
In a video released on Tuesday, the hostage-takers suggested the eight men were working for a U.S. contractor. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman said they had been trying to leave Iraq after failing to find work.
The Foreign Ministry has urged Chinese nationals not to travel to Iraq, citing a grave security threat.
China opposed the war in Iraq because they didn't want their lucrative weapons deals exposed.
I highly doubt they'll send in the PLA.
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