10 jailed in China in baby trafficking

BEIJING -- Liang Guihong is a goodhearted 56-year-old woman who finds homes for abandoned infants. Or she's a leader of a group that sold abducted babies, some of whom were adopted abroad.

A court in southern China sentenced Liang last month to 15 years in prison after she was convicted, along with an orphanage director and eight others, of selling scores of babies -- 78 of them last year alone.

Supporters say Liang and the others passed on foundlings to orphanages for free and are victims of a miscarriage of justice prompted by official zeal to stamp out China's black market in abducted or purchased babies.

The case is sensitive for China, where thousands of babies are adopted every year by Americans and other foreigners, and the government wants to assure adoptive parents and its own public that the children are treated well.

The US Embassy in Beijing said it has asked Chinese officials, who have a respected adoption system, to look into Liang's case and confirm that any babies adopted by Americans were orphaned or abandoned, not abducted or sold.

''It's certainly a nightmare for any adoptive parent to have that seed of doubt," said Meghan Hendy, executive director of the Joint Council on International Children's Services in Alexandria, Va., an association of adoption agencies and parents' groups.

''The adoption community wants orphans to find homes, not children who may have had a family that could have taken care of them in their own country," she said.

Thousands of babies are abandoned every year in China. Many are girls given up by couples who, bound by rules that limit most urban families to one child, want to try to have a son. Others are left at orphanages or by the roadside by unmarried mothers or poor families.

The United States is the number one destination for Chinese babies adopted abroad. According to Hendy, Americans adopted a record 7,906 children from China last year, bringing the total since 1989 to 48,504.

At the same time, thousands of Chinese babies are abducted or bought each year by traffickers and sold to families that want another child, a servant, or a future bride for a son.

China's system is meant to ensure that all adoptees were orphaned or abandoned. Foreign parents are matched with children by the government's China Center for Adoption Affairs and are barred from dealing directly with orphanages.

The Qidong County People's Court in Hunan province convicted Liang, orphanage director Chen Ming, and eight others of buying babies stolen from families in neighboring Guangdong province and selling them to welfare homes, according to state media.

Some were adopted by foreigners ''who made donations" to the homes, the government's Xinhua News Agency said. It said the homes were paid $400-$540 per baby.

Liang and two other people were sentenced to 15 years, Chen to one year, and six others to terms ranging from three to 13 years, news reports said. They said 22 officials were fired for negligence. The court took the unusual step of ordering participants in the case not to talk about it publicly.

The court, the Qidong County prosecutors' office, and the local Civil Affairs Bureau, which is in charge of orphanages, declined to release details on how many babies were adopted abroad or where. A spokeswoman for the Center for Adoption Affairs, who refused to give her name, said the agency is looking into the case.

Supporters of Liang, who lived in Wuchuan County in Guangdong, and the others said they passed on as many as 1,000 abandoned babies to orphanages over the past 14 years. They said they weren't paid for the babies, but were reimbursed for travel and other expenses.

The supporters said legal troubles for Liang and the others began when one of them, a woman named Duan Meilin, was stopped by police while she was taking several children to Hunan.

Police cleared Duan, but the Xinhua bureau in Hunan filed a report for internal government use saying a baby-trafficking ring was operating, they said. Xinhua files thousands of such ''internal reference" reports every year.

Officials in Beijing saw the report and ordered Liang, Duan, and others prosecuted, according to their supporters. They said local officials told the court to convict them. Duan also got 15 years.

Defense lawyers and human rights activists often accuse Chinese officials of interfering in cases to dictate verdicts or sentences.

The chief editor of the Xinhua bureau in Hunan, Zhang Yong, wouldn't confirm whether the agency filed such a report.

Zhou Xiaoyong, a prosecutor in the Qidong County prosecutor's office who said he knew about Liang's case but wasn't directly involved, said the babies appear to have been abandoned or given away, and no one has come forward to claim them.

''There is no apparent evidence that these children were abducted," Zhou said.

A man who answered the phone at the Civil Affairs Bureau in Wuchuan County, where Liang lives, said he hadn't heard of her. The man wouldn't give his name.

China has cracked down on baby-trafficking recently, raising maximum penalties to life in prison, or even death if a baby dies.

''The Chinese adoption system is one of the most well-run," said Hendy. ''For the most part, I don't think there are great concerns about corruption. So parents do feel secure that the children really are abandoned and need loving homes."