Welfare Institutions Caught Trafficking Babies

Welfare Institutions Caught Trafficking Babies
11/28/2005
Updated:
11/28/2005

TAIPEI - Recently, the Qidong County police in Hunan Province, China, uncovered a situation of babies being sold. This discovery led to the exposure of a scandal involving some people in the Hunan social welfare institutes, who were buying and reselling babies.

According to the Sanxiang City Daily, a local Hunan newspaper, China, the Qidong County police recently arrested a Qidong man for baby trafficking. Interrogation revealed that he had sold babies for between 800 to 1,200 yuan (US$99–148) each to various places, including the Hengyang County Social Welfare Institute.

After the social welfare institutes buy these babies, they apply to the government for foster care money. Once they receive the government funds to pay for the care of the child, the institutions sell these babies to other welfare homes for 8,000 to 30,000 yuan (US$990-3,711) each.

At present, the local police have taken action against 27 of the people allegedly involved in the case. A majority of them were directors or staff of some of the province's social welfare institutes.

These suspects include Jiang Zhenghua, Head of the Hunan Hengyang County Social Welfare Institute, Wang Weihong, Secretary of the party division of the Institute; and He Yuhua, Accountant of the Institute.

The report pointed out that the Hengyang County Social Welfare Institute mostly sold these babies to places such as Changsha, Chenzhou, Zhuzhou, Guangxi and Guangzhou. The buying and selling of babies in order to receive government money has already gone on for several years.

The Hengyang municipal committee and the city government held an emergency meeting to discuss an action plan for the case of welfare homes trafficking infants. At present, this case is being further investigated.