China executes two men for child abduction

Two men have been executed for abducting and selling children in China in a sign of the determination of officials to try to eradicate a practice that has aroused widespread public anger.

Hu Minghua, 55, and Su Binde, 27, were executed on Thursday morning, the Supreme People's Court said.

The crime carries the death penalty in China, but kidnappers are rarely sentenced to capital punishment even though child trafficking has become more frequent in recent years. China has accelerated the implementation of criminal sentences that had been on hold until after celebrations for the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule on October 1.

Mr Hu had been convicted of kidnapping and selling nine children from April 1999 to Oct. 2005. He was detained in January 2006. Five of the children, all boys now aged from 3 to 6, have been returned to their families, while the parents of the remaining ones have not been found.

Mr Su had abducted six children between September 2005 to July 2006. Five have been rescued by police while a 6th remains missing.

Child trafficking is a thriving business in China, where traditional preference for male heirs and a restrictive 1-child policy have driven a successful market in baby boys, who fetch a considerably higher price than girls. Girls and women are also abducted and often used as labourers or as brides for unwed sons.

Li Yongshun said that the death penalty should be imposed consistently on traffickers. His grandson, Li Hupeng, was snatched from outside their small farmhouse in 2002 when he was 3. It took Mr Li thousands of pounds of his savings, a letter of appeal to Beijing and 3 years to recover the boy.

Mr Li told The Times: "People who do this should all be executed. They have brought so much distress as well as expense to the families. The men who kidnapped Hupeng were sentenced to 20 years and to life and the police said this was fair because the boy wasnt hurt. But I think the law should be enforced and they should face death."

Estimates of the numbers of victims are difficult to come by. The Chinese Supreme Court said that 1,714 people were punished for abducting and trafficking children in the first 10 months of this year as the Government imposed a crackdown on the crime.

Since April, Chinese police have rescued 2,008 abducted children. They have established the 1st website carrying photographs of 60 children whose parents cannot be found in hopes of reuniting the families. Already a couple of the children on the "Babies Looking for a Home" website have been identified and returned to their parents.

Police say that as many as 30,000 to 60,000 children go missing each year, but it is not known how many of those have been kidnapped. Since parents in southern China grouped together this year to demand that police pay attention and help them in their search for their missing children, officials have begun to tackle the child trafficking.

With the death penalty rarely implemented and the rewards so high for traffickers, the business has proved both attractive and lucrative.

However, one high-profile scandal did result in executions. In 2004, police found 28 drugged and bound baby girls none over 3 months old packed into bags on the luggage rack of a bus heading to cities in the north. 3 people were put to death.

Boys command high prices in the market over 30,000 yuan (3,000). Girls are less sought after and thus slightly less costly. Many families are happy to have either a boy or a girl as long as they can have another child. Indeed, some want a girl who they see as a potential bride for their son in a country where the ratio of boys to girls being born is around 119 to 100.

Source: The Times, Nov. 27, 2009