Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / July 2004

http://cnn.aimtoday.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?flok=FF-APO-1104&idq=/ff/story/0001%2
F20040723%2F2052866526.htm&sc=1104

China Convicts 52 of Baby Trafficking
By JOE McDONALD

BEIJING (AP) - A court convicted 52 members of a baby-trafficking gang
Friday, sentencing the ringleaders to death or life in prison.

The case included a highly publicized incident in March, 2003, in
which 28 baby girls, none older than three months, were found hidden
in nylon tote bags aboard a long-distance bus, according to the
official Xinhua News Agency.

The convictions highlighted the scale of China's thriving black market
in babies and came less than two weeks after police announced the
arrests of 95 people in northern China in an unrelated
baby-trafficking ring.

In the ruling Friday, a court in the city of Nanning sentenced gang
leaders Xie Deming and Cui Wenxian to death, Xinhua said. Four others
were given suspended death sentences, a penalty that is often later
commuted to life in prison.
Five gang members received life in prison, while 40 others were
sentenced to at least 18 months, Xinhua said. One person was convicted
but received no penalty, the report said without explanation.
The ring was based in the city of Yulin in the southern region of
Guangxi, one of China's poorest areas.
Chinese authorities say thousands of children are abducted or bought
from poor families every year for sale to childless couples. Girls are
sometimes sold as brides in rural areas with fewer women.
The trade is driven in part by China's birth control policy, which
limits most couples to one child. The limit prompts some parents to
kill baby girls in hopes of trying again for a boy. A purchased child
that is registered as adopted doesn't trigger the large fines or other
penalties imposed by the ``one child'' policy.
According to Xinhua, Xie bought infants from midwives, health care
workers or other baby-traffickers in Yulin and passed them on to Cui,
who had them smuggled to buyers as far away as northern China.
Babies were drugged to keep them asleep while being smuggled, leading
to at least one death, Xinhua said.
The baby girls found in March at a rest stop in Guangxi were bound for
the eastern province of Anhui, according to police. They said they
were acting on a tip when they searched the bus.
The Xinhua report named 12 employees of two Yulin hospitals who
allegedly sold babies for $12 to $24 each.
Authorities said earlier that no families had claimed the babies
rescued in March, and the report Friday gave no details of what
happened to them. Local officials said they might wind up being raised
in orphanages.
Communist authorities - led by Mao Zedong, who famously remarked that
women ``hold up half the sky'' - prided themselves on raising the
status of women. Upon taking power in 1949, they ended the prewar
custom of selling unwanted daughters to brothels or as servants.
But the trade has flourished amid looser social controls and tighter
enforcement of birth control rules meant to limit the growth of
China's population of 1.3 billion people.
(Subs 2nd graf pvs, `The case ...' to correct that incident occurred
in March, 2003, sted March.)