Teenagers Zhang Bo and Li Bin have told of the horror of being kidnapped and taken to Myanmar, where they were tortured until, as one said, 'I felt like dying'.
Their parents paid a ransom for their return, but others in the group of about 50 teenagers from the same city in Shanxi province are still captive. And mainland police say they can do little about it because the captive teens are in a militia-controlled zone.
The Beijing News reported yesterday that the teenagers, mostly from farming families in Yuncheng , were coaxed by human smugglers, or 'snakeheads', to leave home to work in Yunnan .
Once there, they were abducted and taken to Myanmar, where they were tortured until demands for ransoms of 40,000 to 80,000 yuan (HK$45,400 to HK$90,800) were met.
Zhang Bo and Li Bin, two middle school students in Yuncheng, were persuaded by one of their classmates to go to work in Longchuan county in Yunnan on October 16.
They said they were taken across a sugar-cane field on a motorcycle and told they were in Myanmar, according to the report.