Chinese peacekeepers wave goodbye as they leave Beijing for Haiti on Sunday, October 17, 2004 on a six-month UN mission. They will join another 30-member team which left one month ago. [Xinhua]
Posted on 10/17/2004 1:53:14 AM PDT by RWR8189
Ninety-five Chinese riot police, including 13 women, left Beijing for Haiti on Sunday, the first Chinese troops to be deployed to the Western Hemisphere.
Chinese peacekeepers wave goodbye as they leave Beijing for Haiti on Sunday, October 17, 2004 on a six-month UN mission. They will join another 30-member team which left one month ago. [Xinhua] |
A small advance team left China last month.
"This is a very hard task but we are full of confidence to succeed in this mission," one woman officer told state television.
The force has spent three months training and passed exams administered by the United Nations.
Specially trained for riots and crowd control, the force will join up with a multinational force on the troubled island.
"This is our country's obligation in safeguarding world peace. China, being a responsible major country in the world, should play such role," Vice Minister of Ministry of Public Security Meng Hongwei told state television.
China has participated in peacekeeping missions since 2000 in East Timor, Liberia and Kosovo, among other places, but it has never sent combat troops.
The 125-member team will have its work cut out in Haiti where about 50 people have been killed since September.
Its capital Port-au-Prince has been beset by violence between ex-soldiers who helped topple President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and supporters of the exiled leader who fled on Feb. 29 after US and French pressure to quit.
Brazil is leading a UN force that numbers about 2,600 soldiers. It is a fraction of the 6,700 troops and 1,600 police authorised for the mission to stabilise Haiti after the February revolt in which more than 200 people were killed.
I dont think the guys in DC are digging the idea of the UN using the Red Army to patrol the world. First Haiti, next, some South American country......then, god only knows
Naw... I am not too much of a Conspiracy Person. Anyway... it's not a big deal if a bunch of Chinamen try to pacify the wild Haitians. It seems more like an PR effort to me.
Are they bringing tanks?
Let's wait and see what happens after 15 or 20 of these communist "peacekeepers" get necklessed or hacked apart with machetees.
Haiti's a lost cause. Nothing will ever civilize that place. If the Chinese want to pour a few bodies down that rat hole, I guess we might as well encourage them.
However, I am a bit uncomfortable about Chinese in uniform in this hemisphere. Thin edge of the wedge, etc.
You may have singled out the one reason the US doesn't just toss them into the sea.
I'd still do it.
Chinese peacekeepers are followed by Chinese nuclear subs....
Surely this is a joke.
I can't argue with experience.
Me, too. I don't like it at all. Bad precedent.
Carolyn
ping
Oh...er...well...
I'm working mainly from memory here so correct me if I'm wrong. Don't the Chinese have a large interest in the Panama Canal?
China's already in control of the Panama Canal and God only knows what else in South and Central America.
China as good as owns the canal and surrounding lands.
Thank You Jimmy Carter for letting them into Panama and voiding the Monroe Doctrine!
Anyone who is comfortable about that is either naive or stupid or an out-and-out subversive.
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