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Grassroots website tightens on kidnappers

By Wang Ru (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-05 11:25

Deng Huidong's heart breaks every time she sees her neighbors' children playing in the street. Their smiles and youthful laughter only help to remind her of her own son, who was abducted more than a year ago.

Ye Ruicong was nine months old when he was snatched from his sister's arms on Nov 12, 2007, after kidnappers pulled up next to them in a white van in Dongguan, Guangdong province.

Grassroots website tightens on kidnappers

A mother cries as she is reunited with her deaf son in Shiyan, Hubei province. He was abducted from a special education school along with four classmates in 2007 and rescued by police in Changsha, Hunan province, following a 15-day search. [CFP]

"I saw the van taking my son away," sobbed Deng. "I chased it for as long as I could, but it disappeared. There was nothing I could do."

One year on, and she has scoured the province in search of Ye, begging for help from every local public security bureau and posting information on street corners and in newspapers. So far, her desperate efforts have been in vain.

Deng is just one of the parents whose lives have been devastated by child trafficking, which has become an increasing problem in China since the 1980s.

With most families in the country still wanting male heirs, particularly in rural areas, a thriving black market for babies has developed, with children either abducted or bought from impoverished parents.

Families who do not have a boy are sometimes persuaded to buy one from organized gangs for tens of thousands of yuan. It is a lucrative business for some and, if not sold on, abducted children may also face a life of begging, crime and prostitution.

Police in China investigate around 3,000 human trafficking cases every year, with victims mainly women and children, said the Ministry of Public Security.

There is no official figure for the number of children still missing, although a report by the US State Department suggested as many as 20,000 children are kidnapped in China each year.

Public security bureaus are often singled out for criticism over child trafficking, being blamed for a reluctance to investigate, as well as poor efficiency and procedures.

Dongguan, a major Chinese city of industry, has had 121 cases of child abduction since 2000, said the city's bureau.

Only half have been solved.

"It is hard to find evidence and investigate as there is a big floating population (of migrant workers) in Dongguan," said Li Zhuohua, a criminal police team leader for the bureau. "Besides, after the traffickers transfer and sell the children to buyers, it becomes too difficult to trace them."

The Chinese people are refusing to stand idly by and have joined forces with public security officials to battle the criminals.

After being kidnapped and then moved between Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai for three months, a 16-year-old girl surnamed Wang was finally returned to her parents in north China on May 22.

She was snatched in the city of Datong, Shanxi province, in February and was only found after the intervention of a private website.

"Her parents asked our website for help, so we sent information, including a mobile phone number the human trafficker had left, to the Ministry of Public Security," explained Zhang Baoyan, 47, the founder of the Baobeihuijia Volunteers Association. "The police arrested the suspects, freed the girl and sent her home."

The association, based in Tonghua, Jilin province, has brought together more than 10,000 volunteers, mostly the parents of missing children, to search, collect and check information. Since it was founded in January last year, Baobeihuijia, which translates as "baby back home", has helped recover 36 children.

"During the process of looking for children, every family has lots of information and clues that might be useful to other families. But it is never really shared between them because of a lack of communication," said Zhang. "So this nationwide platform is necessary in the fight against abduction. That is why I set up the website."

Parents use the site to post photos of their children, along with details about their height and distinguishing features, for free, while volunteers based across China upload information on suspected child traffickers and children they think may have been abducted.

"After a missing child is found by police, they are asked whether it snows in their hometown, what plants and animals they have seen, what dialects they speak. The officers then pass these clues on to us so we can match it against the information posted by parents on our website," said Zhang.

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