Chinese Parents Giving Away Unwanted Daughters (SICKENING!)

Straits Times ^ | February 13, 2005 | Agence France-Presse

[srm913]

Chinese parents giving away unwanted daughters

YULIN (GUANGXI) - TINY newborn infants bundled in layers of blankets sleep next to their mothers while fathers and grandmothers sit quietly by the bedside, but this is no ordinary maternity ward.

'Do you want to take the baby home?' one baby girl's grandma asks a visitor at Fumian Hospital, whispering so the nurses would not hear. The infant's parents do not protest and instead eagerly await a reply.

Incidents such as this in farming communities of Yulin city, in southern China's Guangxi region, underline a problem rarely discussed by the government or media - that parents are among the chief offenders for the country's widespread trade in babies.

Despite years of government efforts to end traditional preferences for boys, Chinese farmers still prefer sons to carry on the family line, do tough work and care for elderly parents.

So farmers, limited by China's one-child policy, give away their daughters so they can try again for a boy, experts say.

While Chinese media routinely report cases of trafficking in kidnapped children, a more prominent phenomenon is the giving away of babies by parents.

Parents send word out, usually through midwives, to find people willing to take their unwanted daughters.

International experts say child trafficking is getting worse despite some people's hopes that China's economic development might change the situation.

Official figures show about 1,000 children are trafficked each year, but that often does not include babies given away by their parents, experts say.

In 2003, police caught 20 people transporting 28 unwanted baby girls from Yulin stuffed in bags on a long-distance bus. The babies were drugged to keep them from crying. One girl died.

While traffickers in the Yulin case were executed, and doctors and midwives sentenced to prison, there is hardly any focus on the parents and why they gave up their children.

Some experts say it is because the government is sensitive to any suggestion that its two-decades-old one-child policy is causing baby-selling.

Mr Chen Zhineng, a village official in Yulin, says: 'What parents are most concerned about is getting rid of the girl so they can have a son. In the countryside, that is the reality.' \-- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

[papertyger]

We're not talking about cigars, we're talking about people. Americans raise Americans whether they're from Cuba, China, or Crawford.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Americans don't trade with mortal enemies who slaughter the innocent, torture priests and trade in human flesh.

Think of it as ransom, then. Your stomach may turn at the thought of the "bad guys" getting more money, but in exchange someone is spared an early death or a miserable life.