124 Chinese arrested in Ghana for illegal gold mining

Police in Ghana have arrested 124 Chinese nationals on charges of illegal gold mining, some of whom were also accused of raping the locals.
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) yesterday announced that 124 suspected Chinese illegal miners were detained in Accra, the capital of the West African country.
Francis Palmdeti, the head of public affairs of the GIS, told that the Chinese arrestees were involved in illegal gold mining in the central region of Ashanti, as well as in western and eastern regions, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
Some of them have overstayed without legal documents. The GIS are conducting further investigation to decide how many of them should be repatriated.

The Chinese Embassy in Ghana has confirmed the arrests.
"We have cautioned all the Chinese people in Ghana to strictly abide by the related laws and regulations and never to be misled by the unauthorised information in Internet, " Embassy's spokenperson Yu Jie said.

The reports take the shine of China's much advertised friendly policy to Africa where Beijing is sinking billions of dollars of investments in various projects in different African countries.
After the arrests, state-run media here reported today that officials in Shanglin County in Southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region asked locals from going to Republic of Ghana for gold mining.

Most of the miners who went to Ghana were reportedly from Shanglin and a number those who were arrested on charges of illegal mining were from here, according to a report in the China Daily website.
But a report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said they were arrested on the charges of raping local women.
A statement from the Shanglin government said that the "gold rush" started in 2006.
Currently around 12,000 Chinese from Shanglin were engaged in gold mining in Ghana, it said but unofficial estimates put the number over 50,000.
Chinese gold miners arrested this week in a raid in Ghana have been accused of raping and abusing locals, the Post report said.

A first-person account making the allegations emerged on China's social media today after some web users speculated that Ghana police had mistreated the miners amid a crackdown.
The Chinese embassy in Ghana said no Chinese citizens detained were injured, but confusion and anger intensified among the Chinese online community after rumours claimed that Chinese-owned factories were burned down and several Chinese workers were killed during the raid.