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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao lays a wreath during his visit to a cemetery of Chinese experts dead during their assisting work in Tanzania, in Dar Es Salaam, capital of Tanzania, on June 23, 2006. (Xinhua Photo)

Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on June 23 (Friday) visited the cemetery of Chinese martyrs who lost their lives to the construction of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, or TAZARA, in short.

Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Lowassa accompanied the Chinese visitor on his special trip to the cemetery 24 kilometers away from downtown Dar es Salaam.

Wen spoke highly of those Chinese who came to Tanzania and Zambia more than three decades ago to help with the construction of the 1,860-kilometer railway.

The Chinese premier said that the Chinese, Tanzanian and Zambian peoples would not forget these Chinese martyrs.

Tanzanian Prime Minister Lowassa said that it was so great of those Chinese who had come to build the railway, which was not a railway of China but rather a railway of Tanzania and Zambia.

The prime minister wished the Chinese martyrs rest in peace ina home away from home.

So far a total of 70 Chinese engineers and constructors have lost their lives to the construction and function of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway.

Fifty-one of them were buried in Dar es Salaam; 18 were buried in Mpika of Zambia and one was laid to sea-burial in that he died of heart attack on his way by sea from China to Tanzania.

A total of 157 Tanzanians lost their lives to the construction of the railway that was nicknamed as the "freedom road" at the time when Tanzania and Zambia just won independence from colonialists.

But they were buried at their respective birth places in accordance with their tradition.

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