Coronavirus outbreak: Get us out of here, plead foreign students

ISLAMABAD: Foreign students stuck in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of a coronavurus outbreak, are launching social media campaigns, making phone calls and writing letters urging their governments to get them out as soon as possible.

Governments globally are grappling with the challenge of how to get their citizens out of China’s Hubei province, where 60 million residents now live under virtual lockdown.

Pakistan won’t evacuate citizens from China

Pakistan said quarantine regulations prevented it from flying out the more than 500 Pakistani students and their families from Wuhan. Bangladesh and India said they were putting aircraft on standby.

Muhammad Rauf, 30, a Pakistani master’s student, told Reuters he and around 40 others were locked in their Wuhan dormitory for all but four hours a day. “How long will the lockdown be?... What will we do? Just count down our days?" he said, adding they had been calling for an evacuation plan from their government for 10 days.

Another Pakistani student, who declined to be identified, said the students had been in contact with their embassy but it had not responded in two days.

“They say that we cannot evacuate. Why can’t they evacuate us? Other countries have evacuated,” he said. “We are thankful to the Chinese government ... but we are not the responsibility of the Chinese government. We are the responsibility of our government.”

The United States airlifted nearly 200 Americans from Wuhan on Wednesday and South Korea on Thursday was preparing up to four evacuation flights.

In one video posted on social media, a group of Pakistani students who said they were in Wuhan chanted “please save us” while one man asked the government to “take some measures to get us out of here”.

China has become a major destination for South Asian university students in recent years, fuelled in part by scholarships offered by China. Pakistan and China are very close allies.

More than 400 Bangladeshis, mostly students, are stranded in Wuhan. “Wuhan has become a ghost town,” Rakibil Hafiz, a Bangladeshi engineering student at Hubei University of Technology, told Reuters via WhatsApp. “There is nothing we can do. We are all stuck in the dormitory. We are very worried. I want to go home.”

Meanwhile, thousands of foreigners desperate to escape are watching helplessly as the US and Japan fly their citizens home.

“I feel hurt that they don’t care about us,” Aphinya Thasripech, 32-year-old Thai national, told AFP. “Either I could starve or I’ll get infected and die,” said the factory worker, who is two months pregnant.

The mysterious illness has also spread around the world, with cases being recorded as far away as the UAE, Finland and the United States, but all of the deaths have been in China.

China has imposed transport bans in and around Wuhan – effectively trapping tens of millions of people – including thousands of foreigners – in a bid to contain the virus.

South Korea, France and Britain have all announced preparations to evacuate their citizens. Japan has already brought out two plane-loads.

But “fear, frustration and panic” is mounting among those still trapped, said Pakistani Ruqia Shaikh, 33, who was visiting friends when the city was locked down.

Chinese envoy reassures Pakistanis after students in Wuhan appeal for evacuation

Those with families are eager to leave, said Ruqia, though some students prefer to remain where they are – happier to take their chances against the disease than run the gauntlet of Pakistan's poor health facilities. “Our country is not capable of treating the coronavirus,” she told AFP.

But Fadil, an Indonesian doctoral student in Wuhan, said he and his friends are desperate to leave – even if only to another Chinese city. There are about 100 Indonesians in Wuhan, and another 143 elsewhere in Hubei province.

“The key thing is that we want to get out of here,” he said. “Only fools would want to stay in Wuhan.”

A few Myanmar nationals living in Wuhan have taken to Facebook, issuing public pleas to be brought home. “Other countries are calling back their citizens... when are we going back?” said Khin Thiri Thant Zin, a hospital intern in Wuhan. “I have a headache from crying so much, I cannot sleep at night.”