S Korea rejects Pak claim on slain Chinese
BEIJING: South Korea on Wednesday rejected Pakistan’s claim that the two Chinese nationals abducted and killed by Islamic State in Balochistan were preaching Christianity under the guise of learning Urdu at a school run by a South Korean.
A South Korean foreign ministry official told HT there was no evidence to say the two were involved in preaching under the guidance of a south Korean.
China on Wednesday said it would cooperate with Pakistan to verify whether the duo was involved in illegal preaching activities. The murders put question marks on the security of Chinese workers in Pakistan, central to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. The centerpiece of the new Silk Route plan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, passes through insurgencyhit Balochistan.
Chinese state media had just stopped short of blaming the Chinese citizens, identified as Lee Zingyang and Meng Lisi, for their own deaths. “The kidnapped couple was part of a group of 13 Chinese nationals brought to Quetta in November by a South Korean who runs a school. Language education was merely a front for conducting religious activities,” the Shanghaiist website quoted a Global Times report as saying.
But the South Korean official rejected the allegations. “With regard to the two Chinese confirmed to have been killed by the Islamic State, nothing has so far been found to verify the suspicion that they were involved with a Korean missionary group,” the official told HT.
The official confirmed that 12 Chinese nationals were taking Urdu lessons in a school run by a South Korean in Quetta. “Nevertheless, it is a fact that the two Chinese, along with 10 other Chinese, took classes at a local Urdu language school run by a national of the Republic of Korea by the name of Seo.”
The comments from Seoul deepened the mystery behind the abduction and reported killing of the Chinese. Though Pakistan’s interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has confirmed the deaths, Beijing has stopped short of an official confirmation and the foreign ministry has said it is waiting for more information from Islamabad.
Experts said the move to blame South Korean missionaries “misleading and misguiding” Chinese youth into preaching Christianity in foreign countries” wasmeant to mislead. “Most Chinese Christians have become Christian through Chinese evangelists. It has been very difficult for foreign citizens to proselytize in China,” Yang Fenggang at Purdue University told HT.