Africa Students in China Won’t Talk : Identities Kept Secret in Nanjing; New Unrest Reported

NANJING, China —  Many African students under confinement at a suburban guest house after campus racial clashes have refused to reveal their identities and remain in confrontation with authorities, an education official said Friday.

Ye Chunsheng, vice director of the Jiangsu Province Educational Commission, painted a picture of a small number of alleged troublemakers exerting control over most of the other students being held incommunicado at the facility.

The streets of Nanjing, however, seemed entirely calm Friday night for the first time since disturbances began last Saturday. An argument between guards at Hehai University and African students trying to take Chinese women onto the campus for a Christmas Eve dance sparked days of demonstrations. University authorities also have accused the Africans of tearing down a wall that was being built to make the campus more secure.

Meanwhile, an apparently unrelated confrontation between African students and university authorities has broken out in the city of Hangzhou, about 150 miles southeast of Nanjing.

Protest Link to AIDS

About 50 African students at the Zhejiang Agricultural University are boycotting classes in protest against an alleged attempt by university authorities to limit their contact with Chinese by branding them as being infected with the human immuno-deficiency virus that causes AIDS, according to African students in Hangzhou who spoke with reporters Friday.

For about seven hours Wednesday night, the students kept a university official locked in a room at the foreign students dormitory before he escaped through a window, several students said.

In Nanjing, Ye described a guest house situation that is still tense. Authorities had wanted to register the names and nationalities of all the students immediately after they were taken to the isolated guest house Monday evening, Ye said at a press conference.

“But a small number of the foreign students prevented nearly everyone from registering,” Ye said. “They wouldn’t cooperate. Because of this, some things still aren’t too clear.”

The first report of African or other dark-skinned students fleeing Nanjing to safer cities also came Friday. Eight students of Nanjing Polytechnical University--three from Sudan, two from Somalia, two from Congo, and one from Bangladesh--left Nanjing for Shanghai on Thursday night, according to a student called Bourhane from the Comoros Islands.

Bourhane, 23, said he was remaining in hiding in his room and that one Sudanese and one Nepalese were the only dark-skinned students remaining on his campus.

This week, he said, Chinese students had stood outside the foreign students dormitory and shouted “Come out, Africans!” Bourhane said he did not believe any of the eight students who fled to Shanghai would return to study again in Nanjing.

“They want to change universities or go home,” he said, adding that this is also his wish.

Accuse Telephone Operator

African students in Hangzhou said the incident there began about one week ago when the telephone operator for the foreign students dormitory began telling Chinese callers that the African students are carriers of the AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, virus.

Foreign residents in China must show that they have been tested and are free of the human immuno-deficiency virus. All of the African students now in Hangzhou have been tested, with negative results, after their arrival in China, according to Martin Ayuk, a student from Cameroon. A student from Congo tested positive upon his arrival this fall and was sent home, Ayuk added.

Ayuk said that the derogative nickname for Africans in Hangzhou is aizi bing --”AIDS disease.”

Ayuk said the only thing he cares about any more is leaving China.

Pierre Dujo, a student from Cameroon at the Zhejiang agricultural university, and another African student in Hangzhou, who spoke on condition he not be identified, said African students in Hangzhou are not being allowed to buy train tickets to leave the city.

“Today I wanted to go to Shanghai, but I wasn’t able to,” Dujo said. “Police are preventing us from buying tickets.”

African students at Zhejiang agricultural university believe that the telephone operator acted at the direction of university authorities, and are demanding a meeting with the college president to discuss the issue, several students said.

Exact Number Unknown

Ye, the provincial education official, said that there are “more than 100” students still at the guest house outside Nanjing, but he strongly implied that authorities do not know the exact number, or exactly how many are Africans.

Nine students have left the facility and returned to campuses in Nanjing, he said.

In response to a question, Ye denied a rumor circulating among foreign students in Nanjing that some African students accused of initiating the Christmas Eve clashes at Hehai University had been separated from the rest of the students.

“They’ve locked their doors and won’t let us in,” Ye added. “We haven’t had much contact with them since they arrived at the guest house.” Ye left without explaining anything more about the lockout, but earlier in the press conference, he had said that the students’ living situation was being provided for “in an entirely normal way.”

Western reporters have been denied access to the facility. Those inside, who have been demanding permission to travel directly to Beijing, are not free to make or receive telephone calls, according to American students who initially were with the group.