A Chinese gang has been caught kidnapping and selling children

Kidnapped in China
Mara Silvestri  Jan 21, 2009

A Chinese gang has been caught kidnapping and selling children.

A gang in China has been caught for stealing children and selling them on their thriving black market in distant Chinese provinces. After a five-month investigation, 13 suspects have been arrested, with the gang leader, Su Tonghua, 21, reportedly at the helm of the kidnappings. 

    Members of the motorcycle gang were said to have kidnapped children while riding their motorcycles; some cases were reported to have occurred in broad daylight.

    The kidnappings allegedly took place between September and December, and were reported by the Beijing News to include a three-year-old boy who was taken from the front door of his home and a two-year-old girl who was taken during her sleep. In fact, the majority of the kidnappings were of children between the ages of two and three. 

    According to a report by the Associated Press, the gang sold the children for between 860 yuan ($126) and 26,000 yuan ($3,800). 

    The children were being sold in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Fujian to be used as slave labourers, thieves and prostitution victims, while some girls were sold as brides and other children were sold to orphanages where they found replacement homes overseas with the help of the orphanage.

    A growing issue that fed the kidnapping of children was the inability of a couple to have their own children, where the Beijing News suggests that “the gang may have been selling the toddlers to families who wanted an heir” as the “preference for boys remains particularly strong in rural areas, but birth control policies prevent many families from having their own.”

    The birth control policy limits every couple to one child, leaving some without a family heir.

    The Times Online reports that some “families [are] rich enough to pay the fines associated with a second child and ... convince the local authorities that they have adopted the infant of a distant relative too poor to raise as their own.”

    The Times Online also reported that mothers took precautions when news of the kidnappers reached them, and they began to stay at home, some even preventing their children from going to school. Extreme precautions such as locking doors before dark and refusing to speak were taken in fear of abductions.

    Officials reported to the Associated Press that the majority of the kidnapped children were the children of migrant workers who international human rights groups said two years ago are at more risk as their farmer parents flock to cities looking for work.

    The overall number of children that were abducted is still unknown as “officials do not release figures for the number of children abducted each year, but say that more than 3,000 a year are rescued by police.

    Experts believe those are a fraction of the total and warn that many cases are never registered,” according to The Guardian. 

    The police are in the process of rescuing children, and returning them to their families, but since many cases have not been reported as criminal cases, the system for reuniting children with their birth parents proves to be very difficult.

    Thus far, officers are said to have crossed seven provinces, including Sichuan, Hubei, Fujian and Yunnan, in the effort to rescue the children.