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Child kidnappers arrested in China: state media
Beijing (AFP) May 29, 2009 Police in south China said Friday they had arrested members of a gang that kidnapped and sold children, state media reported, as part of a campaign against human trafficking. Police in Jiangmen city in Guangdong province said they had arrested 10 gang members and rescued 11 children sold on to people in the region and in neighbouring Fujian province, the official Xinhua news agency said. The children, all boys between the age of three and eight, were sent back to their homes after the gang, headed by a 35-year-old woman, had been broken up, a police officer surnamed Wu told Xinhua. Six of the children had been abducted between July last year and January, according to Wu. The head of the gang was arrested in a cement mortar factory in Zhuhai, a city on the border with Macau where she worked temporarily as an operator of a stirring mill. The arrests come as part of nationwide campaign to fight human trafficking -- the sixth of its kind in China. According to Xinhua, around 3,000 kidnap cases involving women and children have been officially reported and investigated every year, but some experts estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 people have been abducted annually in China. The US State Department believes that 20,000 children are kidnapped every year in China. The problem has worsened since the 1980s after the start of the one-child policy, which generally permits urban families only one child and rural families two if the first is a girl. Boys are particularly popular targets as they can be used to continue a family line or work on farms. Xinhua quoted analysts as saying that kidnappings were fuelled by demand from families who wanted a boy, or private employers looking for cheap labour. In June 2007, a child labour scandal sent shockwaves through China, after children and disabled people were found working as slaves in hundreds of brick kilns across central and northern China. Many victims are kidnapped from rural areas, where families lack the knowledge to report an abduction, according to Xinhua. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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