Dedicated to protection

"A lot of the male residents in the camps are former militia members who were defeated and scattered around the country during the years of civil war," Huang said.

"Frequently, we have found machetes, AK-47 rifles and other illegal items during search raids."

The Chinese peacekeeping police in South Sudan are all individual police officers, known as IPOs, who do not carry weapons. Their safety is ensured by members of a formed police unit, or FPU.

Luo Zhiyong, the Chinese police contingent commander, said there are seven civilian protection sites set up by the UN in five states of South Sudan.

Smaller sites have several thousand people, while big ones may have more than 100,000 internally displaced people.

Luo works at the FPU office and is in charge of coordination and cooperation between the formed police unit and the individual police officers.

It is the second time that Luo, 43, has taken part in a peacekeeping task abroad. He was deployed to the UN peacekeeping mission in East Timor from 2001 to 2002.

"The security situation at the sites is highly unpredictable, because people with different backgrounds live there, including many former soldiers disguised as civilians," Luo said. "Therefore, the crime rate is very high at the sites."