50 Chinese Youths Abducted In Myanmar

50 Chinese Youths Abducted In Myanmar 21 Jan 2009, 1639 hrs IST, PTI BEIJING: At least 50 teenagers from China are being held for ransom in a lawless area of Myanmar, state media reported on Wednesday. The boys, from northern China's Shanxi province, have been threatened with torture if their parents fail to meet the kidnappers' ransom demands, the official China Daily reported. Zhou Dawei, 16, was the first to be reported missing in September last year, the newspaper said, citing other Chinese media reports. He had told his parents he was going to the southwestern province of Yunnan — which borders Myanmar — with a friend where jobs were waiting for them. But on October 1, his father received a phone call from Zhou saying he had been arrested for drug dealing and would be executed if he did not pay a fine of 80,000 yuan. Other parents whose children had disappeared also received similar phone calls over the next few days, the report said. In December, the father of another victim wired the money to the kidnappers' bank account, and three days later, his son Zhang Bo was released and was able to tell his story. Zhang Bo said his ordeal began when he met a man who said he did business with militants in Myanmar and could give him 10 days of work for 6,000 yuan — a large sum of money for such a short period. The two crossed the border from Yunnan into Myitkyina in Myanmar on October 16, but the teenager was immediately shoved into a cell where several other young boys were already being held.

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