China Holds Homecoming Ceremony For Peacekeepers-onthesource.com

Jan. 19, 2010 - PRLog -- State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu presided over the ceremony.

Zhou Yongkang, a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, joined families and colleagues of the police officers as their coffins were escorted by armed police officers off the China Southern Airlines Boeing 747. The plane landed in Beijing earlier on Tuesday.

Frequent smothered weepings broke out from the mourners who were all dressed in dark and carried banners reading, "Salute to the peacekeeping heroes," and "Deep condolences to Chinese peacekeeping police officers."

Many of them carried pictures of the disceased, and boards that read, "My brother, I am here to bring you home."

Wearing a white paper flower attached to his chest and a black armband, Zhou led the mourners to bow three times before the coffins draped in Chinese national flags.

"We stand here heavy-hearted," Zhou said in a speech delivered at the ceremony.

The eight peacekeeping police officers were "outstanding representatives of China's police and excellent sons and daughters of the Chinese nation," he said.

Of the eight Chinese victims returned home, four were officers of China's peacekeeping force in Haiti, and the rest were in a team sent by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to Haiti for peacekeeping consultations.

Their bodies were found in the debris of the UN mission headquarters in Port-au-Prince on Saturday and Sunday.

The MPS on Monday published the names of the eight police officers. They were: Zhu Xiaoping, 48, director of the ministry's equipment and finance department; Guo Baoshan, 60, deputy director of the ministry's international cooperation department; Wang Shulin, 58, and Li Xiaoming, 35, both researchers at the ministry, Zhao Huayu, 38, Li Qin, 47, Zhong Jianqin, 35, and He Zhihong, 35, all four with China's peacekeeping force in Haiti. They were all men except for He.

The eight officers sacrificed their lives for the cause of world peace, Zhou said, adding that their sacrifices would not be forgotten by people in China, in Haiti, and across the world.

He said China was a peace-loving country, and that the country had fulfilled its international obligations and shouldered its responsibilities as a major power in the world by sending out peacekeeping police to other countries and regions in support of UN missions.

More than 1,500 Chinese peacekeeping police officers had been dispatched to seven countries and regions since 2000, he said, speaking highly of their contributions to world peace and harmony.

All mourners stood to attention at the end of the mourning ceremony as the coffins were carried amid a slow dirge to white eight hearses which left the airport for the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in western Beijing.

Before the ceremony, Zhou Yongkang visited representatives from families of eight Chinese peacekeeping police officers, and conveyed his condolences to them on behalf of the CPC Central Committee, the State Council, and the CPC Central Committee General Secretary Hu Jintao.

"The loss is a regret and deep sorrow for the Chinese people," Zhou Yongkang told the relatives.

"The Party and the government will definitely pull you through the tough time," he said.
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