Parents protest as Pakistani students stuck in China under coronavirus lockdown
KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Around a hundred people called on Pakistan’s government to “bring back our children” from the locked down Chinese province of Hubei in a demonstration on Sunday in Karachi.
Family members hold signs demanding the evacuation of Pakistani students from Wuhan city in China, who couldn’t return after the coronavirus outbreak, during a protest in Karachi, Pakistan February 16, 2020. REUTERS/Imran Ali
State Health Minister Zafar Mirza said on Twitter on Friday that he and other ministers would hold a meeting for parents in Islamabad on Wednesday and that his government was working with Chinese authorities to ensure students were taken care of.
But many students and their families have expressed growing frustration as the death toll in China mounts, pointing to other countries, including neighboring India and Bangladesh, evacuating their citizens.
The protesters chanted “bring back our children” and held up banners with the same message.
Earlier in the week dozens of families in Lahore held a similar protest outside the Chinese consulate.
A spokesman for Mirza did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for further comment.
Nonetheless, students in touch with Reuters from China over the past days said they wanted to leave.
Mir Hassan, a student whose father died of a heart ailment this month while he was stuck in Wuhan, said he had been told by Pakistani officials he would not be evacuated despite wanting to return home to his grieving mother.
“She is also begging me to come back home. Unfortunately, I haven’t any idea when I will go back home and see my mom,” he told Reuters.
