A southern Chinese province has begun investigating a report that officials seized at least 16 babies born in violation of strict family planning rules, sent them to welfare centers and then sold them abroad for adoption.
The children in Longhui County near Shaoyang City, Hunan Province had been taken away by officials since 2005 after their parents were accused of breaching the one-child policy or illegally adopting children, Caixin Century magazine reported.
The local family planning office then sent the children to local welfare centers, which listed them as being available for adoption, the report said, adding the office received 1,000 yuan (US$154) or more for each child.
Some of the seized children were the only child of couples who were often away working in the cities, the magazine added.
At least one migrant worker said she returned home to find that her daughter had been adopted abroad and was now living in the US, it said. The welfare centers received as much as US$3,000 for each child placed in overseas adoption.
“Before 1997, they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy, but after 2000 they began to confiscate our children,” it quoted villager Yuan Chaoren as saying.
The Shaoyang government is now investigating the case, the popular tabloid the Global Times reported yesterday, though it quoted one official as denying any involvement in child trafficking.
“When we identified children who had been born illegally, we fined the parents in accordance with the law,” the anonymous official told the newspaper.
Provincial officials, whose promotion can be linked to the effectiveness of measures to stop people from having more babies, have often been criticized for using violence or coercion to enforce tough family planning policies.
Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), a blind legal activist, drew international attention when he took on officials over forced abortions in his home province of Shandong and was jailed. He was released in September, more than four years after being convicted of damaging property and disrupting traffic in a protest and has been held under virtual house arrest in his village ever since.
With a population expected to peak at 1.65 billion in 2033, China has been cautious about dropping its one-child policy originally implemented to spare the country the pressures of feeding and clothing hundreds of millions of additional people.
China already allows a number of exceptions to the policy, and some experts have called for a greater relaxation to tackle the problem posed by a population ageing before it first becomes rich.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Myanmar yesterday published a parliamentary bill proposing the death sentence for those who detain or violently coerce people into working in online scam centers. Internet fraud factories have flourished in Myanmar, part of Southeast Asia’s scam economy, targeting Internet users worldwide with romance and cryptocurrency investment cons. The multibillion-dollar black market attracts many willing employees, but repatriated foreigners have also reported being trafficked to sites in Myanmar and tortured by scam center operators. The draft legislation would allow capital punishment for “violence, torture, unlawful arrest and detention, or cruel treatment against another person for the purpose of forcing them to commit online scams.” The
RSS