U.K., South Africa Helping Citizens Held in Chinese Airport
Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub, (pictured) has a brother, aunt, and uncle among 20 South African, British and Indian citizens detained at an airport in Erdos, Inner Mongolia.
Photographer: Dean Hutton/BloombergSouth Africa and the U.K. are providing assistance to citizens detained without charge by Chinese authorities in Inner Mongolia, including relatives of the chief executive officer of Vodafone Group Plc’s Africa unit.
“Consular staff have visited the group to provide assistance and we are liaising with Chinese authorities,” the U.K. Foreign Office said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. South Africa is trying to resolve the situation through the embassy in Beijing, Nelson Kgwete, a spokesman for the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said by text message. The South African government doesn’t know why the people are being held, Kgwete said.