China holds homecoming ceremony for peacekeepers killed in Haiti quake

State Councilor and Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu presided over the ceremony.

Zhou Yongkang, a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, joined families and colleagues of the police officers as their coffins were escorted by armed police officers off the China Southern Airlines Boeing 747. The plane landed in Beijing earlier on Tuesday.

Frequent smothered weepings broke out from the mourners who were all dress in dark and carried banners reading, "Salute to the peacekeeping heroes," and "Deep condolences to Chinese peacekeeping police officers."

Many of them carried pictures of the disceased, and boards that read, "My brother, I am here to get you home."

Wearing a white paper flower attached to his chest and a black armband, Zhou led the mourners to bow three times before the coffins draped in Chinese national flags.

"We stand here heavy-hearted," Zhou said in a speech delivered at the airport, after solemnly bowing once again to the coffins and pictures of the eight peacekeeping police officers.

The eight peacekeeping police officers were "outstanding representatives of China's police and excellent sons and daughters of the Chinese nation," he said.

Of the eight Chinese victims returned home, four were officers of China's peacekeeping force in Haiti, and the rest were in a team sent by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to Haiti for peacekeeping consultations.

Their bodies were found in the debris of the U.N. mission headquarters in Port-au-Prince on Saturday and Sunday, Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

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