Embassy vows to aid embattled Chinese gold miners in Ghana

All Chinese mine workers in Ghana will be given assistance to return home voluntarily, the Chinese embassy in Ghana said yesterday, with the Ghanaian authorities agreeing to stop detaining Chinese on roads between mining sites and the capital, Accra.

Between Saturday and Wednesday, at least 160 Chinese were detained in a crackdown on illegal mining. They would be deported to China next week, Ghana's Immigration Service said.

Many Chinese had subsequently become targets of looting and attacks and had gone into hiding in forests and villages when armed police raided mines, supermarkets and hotels in Kumasi, Obuasi and Dunkwa, in the Ashanti region. Ghana's government said most of the illegal gold prospectors in the country were Chinese. An estimated 50,000 Chinese miners are in Ghana, most from Guangxi .

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Ghana, Yu Jie, said all embassy officials had been sent to look for Chinese mine workers hiding in the Ashanti region.

"After negotiations, Ghana's government has now agreed to stop detaining Chinese citizens in public places, except in mining sites," Yu said. "To those Chinese who want to leave Ghana, we promise to pick them up safely and return them to China. We will help every Chinese in Ghana but the problem is how to contact those in hiding, who have lost contact with the outside world."

Agence France-Presse quoted an immigration official in Accra as saying about 100 Chinese would be deported "by the middle of next week" and would not face criminal charges.