The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics
“When the seven Chinese staff and two Pakistani clients refused, they were beaten and forcibly abducted. The “vice and virtue” squad took their victims to the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, a short distance from the clinic, where a spokesman announced to local press that “this place was used as a brothel house and despite our warnings the administration failed to take any action, so we decided to take action on our own.”4 For the Lal Masjid radicals it was a serious tactical error. The same band of milit...ants had been involved in a similar episode a few months earlier, when they rounded off their assault on another brothel by kidnapping four policemen. But the involvement of Chinese citizens made the June 24 incident far graver a matter. The treatment of China’s overseas nationals had become a subject of acute sensitivity for Beijing. In the eyes of the more assertive sections of the Chinese public it was a test of the Communist Party’s backbone, as the mocking packages of calcium pills they sent to the foreign ministry attested.5 The imprisonment of seven Chinese workers within spitting distance of the principal government institutions of a country that was supposed to be China’s closest ally was a matter of serious embarrassment.MoreLess
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