Government and Policy

Evacuees returning to the warm embrace of home

By Ai Yang and Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-02-26 06:50

Scenes of joy at Beijing airport as evacuees arrive safely from Libya

Beijing - At 3:30 am, when his girlfriend emerged into the arrivals hall wearing a red jacket, 28-year-old Liu Xianyu heaved a sigh of relief after days of concern and a three-hour airport wait.

Shouting out his girlfriend's name above the din, he waved at her with one hand while the other held a bunch of red roses.

Scenes similar to this were repeated hundreds of times as people just like Liu, who had been waiting at Beijing Capital International Airport since late on Thursday night, greeted friends, colleagues, relatives and loved ones, who had escaped from the political turmoil in Libya.

About 450 Chinese people returned to Beijing on Thursday on two chartered planes. As of Friday morning, some 12,000 Chinese nationals had been evacuated by road, sea and air from the north African country, mainly to neighboring countries including Greece, Egypt and Tunisia.

Meanwhile, according to the information office of the Ministry of National Defense, a Chinese navy frigate, Xuzhou, which had been on escort mission in the Gulf of Aden, is en route to waters off Libya to provide support and protection for ships evacuating Chinese nationals.

Vice-Minster of Foreign Affairs Song Tao said the evacuation procedure faces challenges as there are still a large number of Chinese people stranded in Libya amid a deteriorating security situation.

The round trip from Beijing to Tripoli took the first chartered plane 33 hours in total, taking off on Wednesday afternoon and returning early on Friday morning, Niu Tao, a crew member told China Daily shortly after landing.

Many of the flight's passengers, most of whom were women and children, had gone without adequate food and water for more than two days but they were well looked after on the plane, Niu said.

Some of those who returned said they had heard tales of widespread and random violence. "We've heard that many Chinese construction sites suffered severe vandalism, and some were targeted by robbers eight or nine times in just one day," Ma Xiaojie, a translator working for Beijing Construction Engineering Group told China Daily a day after her return.

Ma said her company, located 30 kilometers away from Tripoli, the Libyan capital, was not broken into before her evacuation.

The company had been building 10,000 homes for Libyans but work was, obviously, suspended. "It was going really well and we were about to increase the pace of construction after the Chinese New Year, but we didn't expect this to happen," Ma said.

The 24-year-old from Beijing had been working in Libya for more than a year.

However, Ma took issue with media reports on the disturbances in Libya. From what she saw, the situation was not as chaotic as people from the outside world were led to believe, she said.

"The locals we talked to were quite calm and as far as we could tell, at least in our area, there were more supporters than protesters. Our Libyan colleagues told us they are on Gadhafi's side." The rioters' activities were "exaggerated by the media", she said.

The question of returning to Libya revealed a clear divide among the returnees. Some were clearly scarred by the experience and were determined never to go back, while others said they wanted to return and help complete the projects they were working on.

Luo Linquan, Chinese ambassador to Greece, said a third ship with about 2,300 Chinese people onboard will dock at Crete on Saturday morning local time. Two ships have already transported more than 4,000 people to the island.

China Eastern Airlines in Shanghai will send two chartered flights to the nearby Mediterranean island of Malta on Saturday morning. While Tripoli airport is still open, flight services have been severely disrupted. Many evacuees have fled to Malta, awaiting flights. The two planes are expected to return to Shanghai 28 hours after take-off. A total of eight flights from China Eastern will fly to Libya to collect 2,100 nationals.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/26/2011 page1)