China's embassy in Kyrgyzstan Tuesday called on the Central Asian country to punish villagers it said attacked a Chinese-owned mine, leaving more than 20 workers injured.

The rare diplomatic rebuke from Beijing followed a skirmish between mine employees and villagers living close to the Solton Sary gold deposit which is licensed to China's Zhong Ji Mining.

The embassy said it had informed Kyrgyzstan of its "serious concern" over the incident.

China "firmly asks the government... to take effective measures to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, ensure the safety of (Chinese) citizens," the statement said, noting that guilty parties should be "strictly punished."

China rarely criticises its impoverished neighbour's investment climate despite a series of conflicts between Chinese companies and local communities in recent years.

A health ministry spokeswoman said that 28 Chinese employees of the company that operates the mine in the central province of Naryn had sought treatment after the confrontation began on Monday.

Police said around 300 villagers gathered at the mine to demand that the Chinese company cease work there.

"Both sides threw stones at each other" during the clashes that followed, the ministry said in a statement.

Kyrgyzstan's national security service issued a statement warning citizens against sharing videos of the incident, citing their potential to stir inter-ethnic hatred.

Zhong Ji Mining won a license for the Solton Sary gold field in 2012, shortly after a popular uprising that saw an uptick in conflicts between mining companies and local communities in the ex-Soviet country.

Pastoral farmers regularly accuse mining companies of causing ecological damage, accusations the companies deny.

Chinese companies have been particular targets for community ire.

Last year a Chinese investor in the southwestern Jalal Abad province saw its premises stormed by protesters opposed to the construction of a new gold refining plant.

Some of the biggest clashes in recent years have occurred in the eastern Issyk Kul province where a mine owned by Toronto-listed company Centerra Gold accounted for 8.5 percent of GDP in 2018.

Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous majority-Muslim nation of six million people in Central Asia, is the second poorest of the 15 countries which achieved independence after the Soviet collapse.

India warns China that Kashmir is 'internal matter'
New Delhi (AFP) Aug 6, 2019 - India on Tuesday warned China that the government's contentious move to strip Kashmir of its autonomy and split the region into two parts was an "internal matter" after Beijing slammed the "unilateral" decision.

India, Pakistan and China claim all or parts of the disputed Himalayan region, with New Delhi's announcement on Monday sparking a fierce response from its two nuclear neighbours.

Beijing was particularly critical of India's decision to turn Kashmir's mostly Buddhist region of Ladakh into an administrative territory directly ruled by New Delhi.

"China is always opposed to India's inclusion of the Chinese territory in the western sector of the China-India boundary into its administrative jurisdiction," Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Hua Chunying said.

"Recently India has continued to undermine China's territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law. Such practice is unacceptable and will not come into force."

India says China is illegally occupying 38,000 square kilometres (15,000 square miles) of its northwestern territory, while Beijing claims a 90,000-square-kilometre chunk of Arunachal Pradesh state in northeast India.

The Indian government said Ladakh's new designation as a "union territory" was "an internal matter concerning the territory of India".

"India does not comment on the internal affairs of other countries and similarly expects other countries to do likewise," Indian foreign ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said.

He added that both sides had committed to maintaining "peace and tranquility in the border areas".

The disputed borders between India and China have been the subject of fruitless talks since 1962, when the two nations fought a brief but brutal war over the region.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said late Tuesday his government had fulfilled a longstanding demand of the people of Ladakh to be declared a territory of India's union.

"Special congratulations to the people of Ladakh!," Modi tweeted.

"This decision will give impetus to the overall prosperity of the region and ensure better developmental facilities."

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Uproar as India abolishes Kashmir's special autonomy
New Delhi (AFP) Aug 5, 2019
The Indian government on Monday stripped Kashmir of the special autonomy it has had for seven decades, prompting a furious response from nuclear-armed rival Pakistan and raising fears of further violence in the Muslim-majority Himalayan region. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist party rushed through a presidential decree to scrap from the constitution the Indian-ruled part of the disputed territory's special status. It also moved a bill proposing the Indian-administered pa ... read more