The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) said on Sunday it took the 29 workers for their safety after a battle with the Sudanese army. The army has been fighting the SPLM-N in South Kordofan bordering newly independent South Sudan since June.
But there was uncertainty about how many of the workers remained with the rebels.
Sudan’s state SUNA news agency said the Sudanese military had freed 14 of the workers. But on Monday, China’s Xinhua news agency and government ministries continued to say 29 workers were abducted, and did not confirm the reported releases.
The Chinese embassy in Khartoum said 17 Chinese workers were “moved to a safe place by the Sudan army,” but also that the “29 Chinese workers were still held by rebels,” Xinhua reported.
“The abducted Chinese personnel have had all communications links with the outside world cut,” an unidentified Chinese embassy official said, according to an earlier Xinhua report.
The fate of the workers has become a major news story in China where the country’s expanding presence abroad and awareness of its rising status have brought public sensitivity about nationals killed or taken hostage.
“The unstable political situation is the root reason for attack, and the possibility cannot be excluded that the rebels are targeting Chinese as a bargaining chip with the government,” Li Xinfeng, a researcher on African affairs at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the China Daily newspaper.
Sudan, where China maintains major interests in oil and infrastructure building, has been a focus of Chinese anxieties.
Sudan and South Sudan, at odds over a range of issues including oil revenues, regularly trade accusations of supporting insurgencies in each other’s territory.
South Kordofan is the main oil-producing state in Sudan. The SPLM is the ruling party in newly independent South Sudan, which broke off from its northern neighbor. South Sudan denies supporting SPLM-North rebels across the border.
SPLM-North is one of a number of rebel movements in underdeveloped border areas which say they are fighting to overthrow Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir and end what they see as the dominance of the Khartoum political elite.
Chinese reports said the workers were taken by the rebels who attacked the compound of a Chinese construction company in the area between the towns of Abbasiya and Rashad in South Kordofan.
Wang Zhiping, a manager for Sinohydro Corp. Ltd. that employs the workers, said the company and government agencies were “doing everything possible to rescue the missing workers,” Xinhua said.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued a warning that urged Chinese businesses and nationals in Sudan to “enhance personal safety precautions.”
