89 Kidnapped Infants in China Not Allowed to Live with "Adoptive" Parents

Eighty-one Chinese children and eight Vietnamese children rescued from two child trafficking-for-adoption rings in South China will be temporarily placed into Civil Affairs Department care while authorities attempt to locate their parents. They will use DNA tests to confirm. It appears that most were healthy baby girls purchased by Chinese parents. This serves as more evidence to combat the one-child-policy reason for children being in orphanages, that Chinese parents don’t want baby girls or that they don’t adopt or that trafficking for adoption occured long ago in a few isolated cases in one region only. The coordinated raids on child traffickers will continue until September 15, 2011 according to the article.

“Chen said the Vietnamese infants have had health checks and Chinese police were cooperating with Vietnamese authorities to locate their birth parents as soon as possible.

According to the Chinese Criminal Law, if the buyers have not mistreated the children or obstructed the police rescue operation, they will not be held criminally responsible.

Earlier this month, police rescued 89 infants kidnapped for sale and arrested 369 people linked to two human trafficking rings.

In the first case, the traffickers, who were mostly Vietnamese residents, abducted eight children from Vietnam and sold them in Guangdong and Guangxi, said Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the criminal investigation bureau under the ministry.

The gang ringleaders – called “A Zhang” and “A Lan” – lived in Jieyang city, Guangdong, and used mobile phones to direct gang members in Vietnam.

The suspects in Vietnam abducted the infants there, and illegally transported them on bamboorafts across the Beilun River and over the border, he said.

They then rode bicycles through fields to bypass border checkpoints before arriving at Dongxing and Fangchenggang, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, from where they took long-distance buses to Nanning, the capital of Guangxi.

From Nanning, they took the children to Shanwei and Jieyang in Guangdong to sell them, with prices ranging from several thousands to tens of thousands of yuan for each child, Liu said.

In the other case, police in 14 provinces and autonomous regions cracked a giant cross-region trafficking group of 330 offenders on July 20, the ministry said.

In this case 81 infants were rescued, aged from 10 days to just 4 months.

The Criminal Law says abducted children whose parents cannot be found will not be available for adoption due to the lack of identification. This means they will live in welfare institutions,which are not conducive to the healthy development of children.

“We are negotiating with civil affairs departments to improve the laws to allow unidentified children to be adopted,” Chen Shiqu said.

Possible Adoption if Parents Can’t be Located

Ji Gang, director of the domestic adoption department under the Chinese Welfare and Adoption Center, confirmed that the ministry is discussing “conditional adoption” with the civil affairs department.

This would allow adoption of abducted children, whose parents cannot be found, within a specified time, Ji said.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-07/28/content_12997272.htm
[China Daily 7/28/11 by Zhang Yan]

“Police detained 39 suspects in the action, which was launched by more than 300 officers from Guangdong and Guangxi at 2 pm on July 15.

Police crack huge human trafficking operations
[China Daily 7/27/11]

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