India has detained a Chinese soldier on the Indian side of the remote Ladakh border, the Indian military said Saturday (Jan. 9). Official Chinese media said the soldier had gotten lost and crossed the border, while the Chinese military called on the Indian side to hand over the soldier to China as soon as possible.
The Indian military said in a statement that the Chinese soldier was detained by Indian troops after he crossed the border into the Indian side of the southern shore of Pangong Tso Lake on Friday (8). The statement said the PLA soldier’s crossing was being handled in accordance with prescribed procedures, and the circumstances under which he crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were being investigated.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Communist Party’s Global Times, confirmed in a microblog post Saturday that a Chinese soldier had been detained by the Indian side after getting lost in the western section of the border between China and India. He said it is easy for soldiers to get lost in the area because it has been snowing heavily, and that soldiers from both sides have been seen crossing the border because they got lost in the past, and that the two armies have a mechanism for communicating about such situations, and the latest incident should be resolved according to this mechanism.
The PLA Daily also posted on its microblog Saturday that a soldier from the Chinese border guard force was lost due to darkness and complicated terrain, and that the Chinese border guard force first informed the Indian side of the situation after the incident and hoped the Indian side would assist in the search and rescue; nearly two hours later the Indian side clearly replied that the soldier was found and would be returned to the Chinese side after consulting his superiors.
The PLA Daily also said that individual Indian media have some hype on the matter, which does not match the facts, and called on the Indian side to strictly comply with the relevant agreements between the two countries, to hand over the lost people to the Chinese side, to add positive factors to cool down the current situation on the Sino-Indian border, and jointly maintain peace and tranquility in the border area.
A similar incident occurred in October last year. At that time, India arrested a Chinese soldier who had gotten lost and crossed the border into the western Himalayan border under India’s de facto control, and later returned the soldier to China.
Twenty Indian soldiers were killed in bloody clashes between India and China along the disputed Ladakh border in June last year, while China has not announced the number of casualties. The India-China border conflict has escalated since then, with both sides increasing their military deployments near the disputed border, which is currently in the midst of a freezing season.
To ease the tense standoff, India and China have so far held eight rounds of talks. The Russian-brokered meeting between India and China’s foreign ministers in Moscow on Sept. 10 last year reached a five-point consensus, but did not agree on the crucial issue of troop withdrawal. The two countries will also hold a ninth round of talks at the military chief level, the date of which has not yet been announced.
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