Moment Mother was Reunited with Baby Boy after Doctor 'Sold Him to Human Traffickers by Pretending He was too Ill to Survive'
- Obstetrician Zhang Lin has been arrested in Shaanxi province
- Allegedly sold the baby to human traffickers for £3,000
- Police found the boy after his mother Dong Wan became suspicious
- Officials investigating at least seven similar cases in the region
A mother in China whose newborn baby was sold to human traffickers by a doctor has been reunited with her son.
Dong Wan, 31, wept as she held the boy at a hospital in Fuping, following the arrest of obstetrician Zhang Lin for allegedly trying to sell him to human traffickers.
The doctor apparently told Ms Dong, 31, that her son was born with severe health problems and would soon die.
Emotion: Dong Wan cries as she holds her newborn son after being reunited with him in hospital
Joy: Ms Dong, 31, is handed her baby after he was recovered from human traffickers
The Doctor is accused of persuading the mother to sign the baby over to the hospital before selling the boy to traffickers for £3,000 ($4,600).
Police in Shaanxi province say the doctor has now been arrested and fear the sale may be the tip of the iceberg.
Officers are investigating at least seven similar cases in the region.
The healthy baby boy baby was tracked down by investigators after Dong became suspicious.
Relief: The mother had been tricked by her obstetrician into handing over her son to him
Crime: Ms Dong spoke of her pain at being tricked by the doctor she had previously trusted
The mother said: 'I was told the baby would not survive and the best thing for me would be to let the hospital take care of it so I did.'
After signing the documents at The Fuping County Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital Ms Dong changed her mind and begged her husband, Lai Guofeng, to call the police.
The baby was tracked down hundreds of miles away in neighbouring Henan province where the original traffickers had sold him on for a profit.
Dong Wan's baby son (pictured) was sold to human traffickers in China after she was allegedly told by doctor Zhang Lin that he was born with severe health problems and would not survive
The baby's heartbroken father Lai Guofeng became suspicious after doctors said their son was too ill to live and called police
Dong Wan said she was told that it was in the baby's best interests to let the hospital take care of him
Police investigators Zhang and two suspected accomplices are under arrest.
Local deputy director Chen Jainfeng said: 'The suspects told us where the baby was and with the help of local police we found the child.
'The baby is undergoing medical tests and is on his way home.'
The baby's father Lai Guofeng holds up his son's clothes and a relative sobs over a picture of the boy
Zhang Lin, an obstetrician at The Fuping County Maternal and ChildHealthCare Hospital(pictured), has been arrested and police say they are investigating a further seven similar cases
UPDATE
Twin Babies Stolen by Doctor in China Found
More Baby Trafficking Cases Emerge as Authorities Arrest 5 Hospital Officials
AFP, Beijing, China, 10 August, 2013
Twin baby girls allegedly stolen and sold by the obstetrician who delivered them in China have been recovered by police, state media reported today.
The girls, born last month in the northern province of Shaanxi, were allegedly victims of the same female doctor who sold a baby boy reunited with his parents earlier this week.
The obstetrician, Zhang Shuxia, told the twins' mother in the delivery room that her babies had "deadly congenital diseases" and convinced her to give them up, China National Radio reported.
Zhang also said their arms and legs were "broken" and stopped other relatives seeing them, the report added.
Similar details were described in reports this week about the boy, who police said was sold to a farmer with three daughters in the central province of Henan by suspected human traffickers for 60,000 yuan (US$9,800).
The doctor and two other suspects were detained after the boy's family became suspicious and reported their case to police. The blaze of publicity surrounding his recovery has prompted a wave of others to come forward.
One of the girls was found in Shandong province, more than 500km from her birthplace in Fuping County, and her sister around 160km away in Shanxi province, the website of the People's Daily said citing local authorities.
So far five officials have been sacked in Fuping, including the director of the county's health department and the head of the hospital where the children were born, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Police had received reports of 55 possible incidents by yesterday, including 26 allegedly involving Zhang, it added.
Lou Qinjian, governor of Shaanxi, yesterday called the case "vile" and vowed to punish those responsible "seriously", it said.
Fuping is the home county of the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trafficking of children is a serious problem in China, blamed in part on the "one-child" policy which has put a premium on baby boys, with girls sometimes sold off or abandoned.
Under the policy, aimed at controlling China's vast population of more than 1.3 billion, people who live in urban areas are generally allowed one child, while rural families can have two if the first is a girl.
In a much publicized case, Chinese police rescued 89 children and arrested 355 suspects in December after breaking up a series of child trafficking rings. AFP
Related:
Govt officials Involved in China Baby Trafficking:
Chinese media have exposed a child-trafficking ring involving family planning officials in the nation's Hunan province.
According to a report from Caixin Century Magazine, family planning “enforcers” in the Hunan city of Shaoyang, Longhui county, have seized at least 20 children over the past ten years, LifeSite News reports.
The children were supposedly born in contravention of China’s one-child-policy birth quota, and were sold to a local child welfare center for about 1,000 yuan ($154), who in turn listed them as orphans available for overseas adoption at $3,000 each.
Some of the children now live in the U.S., the Netherlands and Poland and have never met with their Chinese parents since being seized and sold for adoption, the magazine reported.
The report said village officials usually accompanied the enforcers when taking a child. Their explanation for the action was that either the child had been illegally adopted or the parents had breached the national one-child policy and could not afford the resulting fine.
“Before 1997, they usually punished us by tearing down our houses for breaching the one-child policy,” Yuan Chaoren, a villager, told the magazine.
“But after 2000, they began to confiscate our children.”
Some victims were actually a family’s first and only child, the report said.
The magazine quoted one man, identified as Yang Libing, who said his daughter Yang Ling was snatched in 2005 while he and his wife were working in another city, even though she was their only child. He said he has since located the girl, who is now 7 years old and living in the United States.
“They mistook my daughter as being illegal when my wife and I were working in Shenzhen,” Yang, a local migrant worker, told the magazine.
Children as Young as 10 DAYS old Among 89 Rescued from Clutches of Chinese People Traffickers
By Daily Mail UK
Children as young as ten days old were among 89 youngsters rescued as police smashed two huge child-trafficking rings in China.
Authorities made 369 arrests in the latest crackdown on the country's thriving black market in child slaves.
Despite traffickers in China potentially facing the death penalty, they want growing numbers of children to exploit for slave labour or sex work.
It was not clear from the reports posted on the Ministry of Public Security website today whether sexual abuse might also have been a motive.
Poignant: A floor banner shows images of the numerous children abducted in China since the 1980s, a problem authorities are still struggling to get to grips with
One of the police busts stretched across 14 provinces in China, while the other involved a trafficking ring which mainly sold children in Vietnam through neighbouring Guangxi province.
Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the Ministry of Public Security Criminal Investigation Bureau, said if the buyers have not abused the children, they cannot be held criminally responsible.
Mr Liu said the 'dreadful practice of buying and selling children' is a result of ignorance of the law in rural areas as well as traditional Chinese social norms that call for people 'to have both sons and daughters' and children who will look after a parent in old age
China's traditional preference for male heirs means some families sell their female babies in order to try for a boy, since the country's one-child policy limits most urban couples to one child and rural families to two.
Tearful Chinese father Peng Gaofeng (left) holds his son Peng Wenle, who had been missing for three years after being kidnapped by traffickers, and was rescued in February
A report said raids were carried out on July 20 in 14 provinces in the south, east and north of the country.
The operation involved 2,600 officers and the People's Daily said the youngest child was 10 days old and the oldest four years.
A separate report which was not published on the ministry's website said the Vietnam operation on July 15 resulted in the rescue of eight infants aged from 10 days to seven months.
In that raid 39 people, of whom at least four were Vietnamese, were detained.
A total of 89 minors were rescued and 369 suspects arrested in both operations, the reports said.
Police sent the rescued children to orphanages as their parents had not been found.
It is often difficult to trace the parents of trafficked children and the law has not clearly defined the circumstances in which a buyer of a child should be punished. While many babies are stolen, some are sold by their parents.
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