At least 50 teenagers from Shanxi Province are being held by kidnappers in Myanmar, the Beijing News reported yesterday.

Their parents have been told the children will be tortured if the criminal group's ransom demands are not met, the report said.

Zhang Yunbao, a police captain from the Yanhu district of Yuncheng - the Shanxi city from where some of the youngsters hail - was quoted as saying that as of Monday, police had received "at least 50" reports of children being held in the Myanmar city of Myitkyina.

However, the actual number of kidnapped children could be much higher, he said.

Rumors about teens going missing from Yuncheng began circulating late last year.

At the end of September Zhou Dawei, 16, was the first child to be reported missing. He had told his parents he was going to Yunnan with a friend, where jobs were waiting for them.

However, on Oct 1, Dawei's father, Zhou Runsheng, received a phone call from his son saying he had been arrested for drug dealing and if his father did not pay a fine of 80,000 yuan (US$11,700), he would be executed.

Over the following days, the parents of other missing children received similar calls from Myitkyina.

On Dec 5, Zhang Yaowu, the father of another victim, wired 80,000 yuan to the kidnappers' bank account as demanded.

Three days later, his son, Zhang Bo, was released.

Zhang said the episode began after he and a friend, Li Bin, were invited to go to a birthday party by a former school friend Du Feng.

They said Du told them that he was working for a man named Zhang Yingzhou who did business with Burmese militants.

Du said that if the boys "wanted to be rich" he could introduce them to Zhang, who was in Yuncheng at the time.

They later met Zhang Yingzhou who said they could earn 6,000 yuan in 10 days.

On Oct 16, the four crossed the border into Myanmar from Longchuan, Yunnan province.

Zhang and Li said once they arrived in Myanmar, however, they were put in a cell, where several other young boys were being held.

Zhang Yunbao said that Chinese police knew where the boys were being held but could not do anything about it, as the crime was "outside their jurisdiction", Beijing News reported.

"The Myitkyina area is controlled by militants who don't even listen to the Burmese government," he said.

Qu Xinjiu, a professor with the Renmin University of China, said there is no solution to this type of kidnapping, as they took place in an area not ruled by national law.

(China Daily January 21, 2009)