ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s government said on Saturday it was sticking to its decision to not evacuate Pakistani citizens stranded in China’s coronavirus-hit regions, in order to ensure the safety of the larger public.
Approximately 28,000 Pakistani students are currently studying at Chinese universities, with more than 500 of them in the virus epicenter of Wuhan, according to foreign office data. Four Pakistani students tested positive for the virus earlier this week, and officials said they were ‘improving fast,’ amid rising criticism from opposition parties calling on the government to change their rapatriation stance.
Impassioned video appeals from the stranded students have flooded Pakistani social media, but Dr. Zafar Mirza, Prime Minister’s adviser on health, said the government would not repatriate the students to appease the public.
“We don’t want to follow [the example of] any other country just to get applause from the public,” he said, and added: “We have to take the decision in a broader context.”
Many countries including the US, UK, Australia and India have flown their citizens out of China after the outbreak of the virus which has killed 259 people, all of them in China, and with 11,000 confirmed cases of the infection in the country. The actual number of cases not yet officially confirmed, is thought to be much higher. The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak a global health emergency after the infection spread to at least 18 other countries.
On Friday, Pakistan, which shares a large border with China, announced it was suspending all direct flights to and from the country until Feb. 2.
“All our students in China, especially in Wuhan, are being looked after well,” Mirza said, a day after it was announced during a Senate session on Friday that $840 had been deposited into the account of every Pakistani student stranded in China.
Mirza said Pakistan had reached an agreement with the Chinese government whereby Pakistanis in China would be allowed to fly out after they had completed an incubation period of 14 days.
“Just by implementing this one measure, we will be able to make Pakistan a safe place,” he said.
But as the daily death toll rises, Pakistani students in China’s cordoned off areas are getting more desperate.
“We are scared even to breathe,” Tatheer Hussain, a student of medicine at Hubei University of Science and Technology, told Arab News via a video message.
“We ask our government not to humiliate us by handing us $840. We don’t need money, we need safe passage home,” Hussain said.
“There are 40 other medical students in the university with me, and we are all isolated in our rooms. Day after day, we are being betrayed by our government,” he said.
“We will stay in quarantine, we will self-incubate and prove that we are virus-free,” he said, and added: “If we are not virus-free, you can just send us back to China.”
