New weapons in battle against child stealers

• Source: Global Times
• [21:02 November 25 2009]
• Comments

GT: Abductors and traffickers are usually punished sternly, but the buyers are usually not. Is this indulging such crimes? Should it be changed to combat this trade? How can the buyer's market be removed?

Yang: These buyers usually buy children and adopt them as theirs.

Some of them can't bear children, and some just want a boy or a girl even if they already have a girl or a boy. They don't want to break the law intentionally.

The current practice is, if the buyers don't maltreat children, and they don't prevent police from saving children, or even cooperate with us, they will not be punished.

But indeed they should acknowledge their responsibilities for these crimes. Now we are thinking of how to use effective measures to eliminate the buyers.

Legal punishments by themselves can't remove the buyers. Most buyers live in rural areas.

The trafficked children are usually introduced to them by their relatives and neighbors. And these people don't think this practice is illegal.

Therefore, education on abduction and trafficking children is very important to them.

The education has achieved relatively good results: In the past these people tried hard to keep police from taking children away, but now they usually cooperate.

In addition, guiding buyers to adopt children legally also helps to eliminate the market. If buyers can't find ways to legally adopt children, they will certainly turn to another way.

Actually, child welfare institutions are receiving fewer abandoned children than before, as now people have a more tolerant attitude to children born outside marriage and these children are seldom abandoned.

Most foundlings are disabled and few people would like to adopt them.

GT: According to the Ministry of Public Security, missing people cases are investigated only after 24 hours, but this period is crucial for finding missing people. Does this weaken the public security department's efforts to combat the trade in children?

Yang: This policy is on adult disappearance. Many countries, including China, have such a regulation. There are no clear policies on how long to wait after a child disappears before the case can be put on file.

In the past, local public security offices decided when was appropriate by themselves.

But we issued a new regulation, requiring that any missing children must be put on file straightaway, and that investigations should be conducted with every effort possible.

The new regulation has brought good results.

Take Guangdong Province. After the new regulation was put into practice on April 9, around 1,500 children were saved.

Some of the 1,500 children were abducted by traffickers and saved before these traffickers left cities.

GT: Helping children find their parents usually takes a long time and a high cost. What are the major difficulties on this respect?

Yang: Yes it's quite a hard job to find children's parents.

The biggest problem is information asymmetry. Many parents don't know where to find their children and don't know whether their children have been rescued by the police or not.

Although we have put children's information online or released it on TV, most of the parents losing children are migrant workers and seldom use the Internet or watch TV.

Thus they can hardly have access to the information. We're planning to use some traditional methods, such as broadcasting.

We have helped a large number of children find their parents by asking kids where they are from, or through traffickers' information.

But some kids were very young when being abducted and have been resold several times. They can't explain clearly where their homes are.

For those who can't find parents, we have two ways to help them.

We have established two databases for parents with missing children so that we can find parents for lost children.We also use DNA technology to help lost children and parents find each other.

This service is supported by public finance and is totally free to children and parents. We have confirmed the identities of 274 trafficked children.