Police rescue 37 babies 'fed on noodles and leftovers' in China child trafficking crackdown
Police rescue 37 babies and a three year-old girl after raid on 103 child traffickers working across four regions of China's Shandong province, Chinese television reports.
Police in China rescued 37 babies and a three-year-old girl and arrested 103 suspected child traffickers in a massive operation to crack down on the trade in children, China Central Television has reported.
The infants were abused. The traffickers fed them with instant noodles or some left-over vegetables while waiting for buyers
Newborn babies – reportedly fed on instant noodles and leftover vegetables by the traffickers – were sold, with boys attracting prices of between 50,000 yuan (about HK$63,000) and 80,000 yuan.
Baby girls – not so prized in Chinese society – attracted lower prices, police said.
Chen Shiqu, director of the Ministry of Public Security's Anti-trafficking Office, told CCTV that it was a relatively a new form of crime, with smugglers arranging for pregnant women to give birth in an abandoned factory in Jining, south of Shandong, and then sell their children.
The traffickers, working in the Shandong regions of Taian, Linyi, Qufu and Jining, reportedly recruited pregnant women willing to sell their babies, and arranged for them to live in the abandoned factory.
After giving birth, the women did not nurse their children; they left the factory after handing over their babies to the traffickers, the CCTV programme said on Monday.