Child trafficker sentenced to death

Yu Huaying started by selling her own son born from an affair in 1992

A woman has been sentenced to death for trafficking 11 children in a case dating to the 1990s.

In a verdict posted on its WeChat account, the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court in Guizhou province said the child trafficker, Yu Huaying, abducted children in the country’s southwest, including Chongqing and Guizhou, took them to Handan in northern Hebei province and sold them to buyers between 1993 and 1996.

She committed the crimes with her partner surnamed Gong, who has since died, it said. A further two people who served as intermediaries in trafficking children in Hebei would be punished through separate court actions, according to the post.

Yu was sentenced to death because the court considered her crime caused “extremely significant” social harm and the criminal circumstances were “particularly severe”, according to the post.

It said that instead of confessing her crime and expressing remorse, Yu intended to appeal in court.

Yu was born in 1963 and grew up in an extremely poor town in southwestern Yunnan province, Beijing News Radio reported.

Her first dealing with human trafficking was selling her own son who was born in 1992 from an extramarital affair with Gong when they were both married to other people, according to the report.

Her son was sold in Hebei for 5,000 yuan because neither Yu nor Gong was capable of raising the boy because of their existing marriages, it said. Her son was not among the 11 victims she was accused of trafficking.

Gong and Yu continued committing crimes after Gong suffered business setbacks, according to the Beijing outlet. The pair operated together, living in a place for a while and getting acquainted with people in the area while searching for a suitable child to target. Once becoming familiar with the children, Yu would lure them away using snacks, it said.

Most victims were from low-income families whose parents could not pay adequate attention because they had to work long hours elsewhere, said Beijing News Radio.

Yu was detained by authorities twice in the 2000s for similar crimes involving trafficking children, it said.

One crime dating back three decades was uncovered after a girl abducted in the 1990s eventually found her biological sister and reported to police with more clues that led to Yu’s arrest, Beijing News Radio said.

Child trafficking has been a notorious and long-standing problem in China. From 2010 to 2019, the number of cases of trafficking in women and children nationwide totalled 112,703, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

A series of high-profile cases in recent years has pushed the issue into public consciousness.

In one case, a woman named Xiaohuamei – also a victim of human trafficking – was found living in a shed with chains after having given birth to eight children.