Since the news broke of a Chinese doctor selling babies from her own maternity department there have been reports of nearly 55 similar cases, half of which involved the same doctor. Her clients were willing to make just over three and a half thousand dollars for a child - she would dupe to parents into believe that their unborn children had serious health issues, congenital birth defects before passing the newborns to their new parents.
Despite repeated government crackdowns, the crime still persists, and in a testament to the size of the problem, more than 54,000 children have been rescued and 11,000 trafficking gangs “smashed” since 2009. Previously, criminal gangs would focus on snatching young children, usually boys, from their homes and selling them on. The new scandal, which implicates Zhang Shu Xia, the deputy head of the maternity department, compounds the distrust that Chinese people already have for the medical establishment.
The meager wages that government officials, including doctors, earn pushes the people who, in other countries, would be respected pillars of the community to commit such crimes.
Local family planning organization have been known to keep tabs on families that already have one child, and are rumored to be expecting another, snatching the babies soon after they are born - the profits raised help to fill the coffers that the officials plunder. Spending most of their times wandering around neighborhoods looking for baby clothes hanging on washing lines, and checking for unregistered newborns, the baby trade is a lucrative one, and one that down on their luck local officials can't resist. The government crackdowns have forced up the prices for illegally traded children, the going rate being about 90,000rmb.
The high prices and almost limitless supply and demand often means that the gangs, usually based in rural areas enjoy the protection of the officials whose nests they feather. It's in such areas where the flow of babies for sale is difficult to stem. Orphanages rarely check where the children come from, and DNA samples aren't routinely taken.
A useful revenue stream for the orphanage, traffickers make good money selling through for illegal international adoptions. Scott Tong reported on the moneymaking scheme for Marketplace.org: "To meet the demand, Duan says he enlisted his wife and sisters to locate more babies. They started buying infants from a supplier in Guangdong province 600 miles away. They say this woman systematically collected unwanted babies from local hospitals."
This weekend, Chinese police succeeded in tracking down and rescuing twin girls, allegedly sold by Zhang to traffickers. The People's Daily, a state-run organ has been keen to play up the faultless efforts of the Chinese police, providing emotive, wall-to-wall coverage of the moment the couple were reunited with their newborn daughters - puffing up the official line from the Chinese government that the problem is now less rampant. Parents wept and fell to the knees in front of the police officers who confirmed the child's identity by way of a DNA test. At the time of writing, two senior officials have been fired at the hospital
Strangely for the typically publicity-shy police in China, embracing the Internet is helping bring the numbers of trafficked babies down. Turning to the massively popular social media platforms, parents and activists have access to resources that they previously could only dream about utilizing. The police official who heads the anti-trafficking division, Chen Shiqu, has his own account, with close to three and a half million followers. Initially using a pseudonym, Chen expertise on the topic soon led to his real identity being revealed online. By retweeting stories and leads from amateur activists and charity organizations, Chen hopes to raise public awareness of the problem, and help return stolen children to their rightful homes.
As one might expect in black market trading, the safety of the people being trafficked is not one of the major concerns. In 2004, one the first cases to come to massive public attention featured the deaths of several babies. Guangxi police discovered no more than 28 baby girls in the back of bus, all were less than 3 months old, and all had been drugged to keep them quiet. At least one of them died from suffocation, and the others had turned blue die to lack of oxygen - they were all to be sold in Anhui province for the princely sum of $24 each. In 2005, the first convicted child traffickers were executed in China.
With so many cases being reported, couple who legitimately adopt children are being forced to ask themselves some searching questions - often having to entertaining the idea that their child may have been traded on the black market. Papers are falsified and certificates are forged, on an industrial scale. With adoptions of Chinese children by American couples in decline, it may become much cheaper for Chinese parents to get the male heir, by hook or by crook, that their families demand.
Related articles
No comments:
Post a Comment