Police in Yunnan have rescued 31 infants as part of a child trafficking bust, according to the Ministry of Railways’ public security bureau. From Xinhua News:
The ring abducted babies in Yunnan and sold them in Hebei and Shandong provinces in northern China, according to the bureau.
Railway police in Yunnan’s provincial capital of Kunming have arrested 76 suspects so far after traveling to seven different cities in the three provinces since November 2011 to bust the ring.
The ring purchased the infants at a price of 8,000 to 10,000 yuan (1,266 to 1,582 U.S. dollars) each in Yunnan and sold them in Hebei and Shandong for 20,000 to 50,000 yuan, according to the bureau.
The family-based ring is connected by well-organized members who are responsible for abducting, purchasing, transporting, introducing and adopting infants, said Wang Ansi, an official with the public security bureau of the Kunming Railway.
The ring could achieve one trans-provincial trade in three days to traffic the infants, who were stolen from the Zhuang-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Wenshan in Yunnan province, he said.
The kidnapping and trafficking of children has long been a problem under the one-child policy in China. Police reportedly rescued more than 8,000 children last year, and Xinhua reported last week that the China Social Assistance Foundation (CSAF) had launched a fund dedicated to utilizing microblogs to curb child abduction:
The CSAF said the public fund, which was initiated by some Chinese celebrities, will encourage people to report child trafficking, volunteers to trace abducted children and media to publish related information, combining the efforts of police, judicial departments and online volunteers to fight against child trafficking.
The fund will also try to promote public awareness of child abduction, as well as enhance the capacity for families and children to fight child trafficking, the CSAF said.
In the meantime, a non-profit miniseries named “Seeking the Lost Children” will debut on the Internet next week. The eight-episode miniseries exposes the previously untold stories of some families that have suffered from child abduction.
Read more about the plight of kidnapped children in China via Charles Custer of China Geeks, who is producing a documentary film on the subject.
