The Supreme People’s Court recently disclosed that two men were executed Nov. 26 for abducting and selling children. Parents victimized by such crimes say the executions serve only to appease public sentiment.

The trafficking of children has been escalating sharply in recent years, arousing widespread public anger and frustration throughout China, according to a Sound of Hope radio report. Every year thousands of children—primarily those of poor farmers and migrant workers—are abducted and sold.

Concerned parents of kidnapped children argue that punishing traffickers alone will not benefit the abducted children: The regime must take effective steps to stem the tide of the booming black market, and punish not only the traffickers, but the buyers as well.

Police indifference

Mr. Chen, the father of a missing child from Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province, said that the local police are often indifferent and callous when confronted with a missing-child case.

“The government has not done enough to combat kidnapping,” Chen said. “I do not think punishing a few traffickers is going to work. The relative of a missing child told me that he found a trafficker living in his neighborhood. He submitted a claim, but the police did nothing.

“Do you know that it was only for the sake of appearances that those two traffickers were sentenced to death?” Chen asked. “In order to appease public sentiment, the government decided to kill two traffickers this time. I know that’s why they did it.”

A buyer’s market

Mr. Peng, the father of a kidnapped child from Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province, thinks that those who buy children are at the root of the problem. If they are not punished, he said, the selling of stolen children will become even more professional, organized, and violent.

“Some people are driven by greed and will risk committing a crime for the money,” Peng said. “A 3 to 5-year-old boy can be sold for as much as 40,000 to 50,000 yuan (US$5,888–$7,352). Without the buyer’s market, nobody would be engaged in stealing or kidnapping children.”

A woman from Hebei Province who asked to remain anonymous said she has been trying to find her child for the past 15 years, and during that time, more and more children have disappeared. She hopes that punishments will be strengthened for both the traffickers and the buyers.

“If the government does not take concrete steps to stop the problem, more and more parents across the country will lose their children, as I have,” she said.

The Chinese regime estimates the number of children involved to be 10,000 a year. The U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, however, estimates that there are 20,000 to 70,000 victims of child trafficking each year in China.

Yang Zaixin, a lawyer from Guangxi Province, noted that the trafficking of women and children is illegal in China, but buyers have rarely been punished in accordance with the law. He also said that the trafficking of children is just one of the critical social issues facing Chinese society today.

Read original Chinese article: http://soundofhope.org/programs/162/144114-1.asp

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