Taiwanese police bust cross-strait baby trade ring

Central News Agency, Taipei

Taipei, 4th August: The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) under the National Police Administration announced on Tuesday [4th August] it has busted a criminal ring trading infants across the Taiwan Strait.

CIB officers said they already arrested a key suspect involved in the illegal trade on Monday...

Police confiscated birth data and documents concerning more than 100 infants "born" at the [western Taipei] clinic between 1995 and 1998 for study. Through DNA tests on the infants and their parents, police found that 30 of the 100-plus babies examined do not have biological ties with their current "parents".

The "parents" of 11 suspected problem babies have admitted that they are not the birth parents...

But CIB sources said most of the babies available at the clinic were either stolen, swindled or bought from the mainland.

The sources said mainland human smuggling rings sold those babies to their Taiwan counterparts for 10,000 renminbi (1,208 US dollars) each. The mainland criminal elements usually placed babies in cupboard cases smuggled into Taiwan by fishing boats. The mainland criminals laced sleeping pills in milk to make babies sleep to facilitate shipment.

...The clinic allegedly issued false birth certificates for those babies and sold them to infertile couples or women who sought children. Each mainland baby was sold for 300,000 NT [New Taiwan] dollars (8,721 US dollars), the sources said...