Africans Press China on Student Dispute

As African-Chinese tensions flared at campuses across China on Wednesday, African nations pressed an international diplomatic response to disturbances that began here Christmas Eve.

The Organization of African Unity issued a complaint to China’s ambassador to Ethiopia expressing concern about “the current disturbances in institutions of higher learning in China” and appealing to him to take steps “so that the appalling situation might come to an end,” according to a statement released to the press in Addis Ababa.

In Beijing, African diplomats met Wednesday to discuss the disturbances. An African diplomat said they hope to send a delegation to Nanjing on Friday to visit about 50 African students still in isolation at a guest house outside the city. African diplomats have been unable to communicate by telephone with citizens of their countries who are at the facility, he said.

“We are very concerned, deeply concerned, by this case,” he said.

In Nanjing, the 50 Africans from Hehai University still at the guest house are demanding, according to others who were removed by police Saturday, that Chinese authorities arrange for a second visit from Beijing-based African diplomats, who first saw them on Dec. 27.

That visit came the day after the students were forcibly removed to the guest house from the Nanjing train station. They had gone to the station in an attempt to travel to Beijing, 600 miles to the north. But Chinese police blocked them from boarding trains, then removed them when Chinese student protesters shouting anti-African slogans gathered outside.

The trouble had started when African students trying to take Chinese women to a Christmas Eve dance on campus got into an argument with gatekeepers. Chinese aides say 11 Chinese and two Africans were hurt in the ensuing brawl.

In Wuhan, Chinese students at the Central China Polytechnical Institute have put up anti-African wallposters, including one reading “Black Devils Go Home,” according to a student from Gabon attending Hubei Medical College.

This came after a demonstration by about 300 students who roamed the campus Saturday and threw rocks at the foreign students’ dormitory, the Gabonese student said.

The student said that Chinese students had written a letter to the university’s president demanding that all African students be sent away because they were “polluting Chinese society with their relations with Chinese women.”

In Beijing, about 400 African students at the Beijing Language Institute began a boycott of classes Wednesday. The students protested a Chinese demonstration at their institute Tuesday that they viewed as anti-African. Their statement also expressed support for the Hehai University students in Nanjing.

“There are many African students detained in Nanjing after they protested against Chinese racial discrimination,” the statement said.

“Let us unite and fight for our dignity and color,” the statement declared. “Black is beauty. . . . If we go home, it does not matter. China is not the whole world. We meet another apartheid in China that we can no longer tolerate.”