28 baby girls found in suitcases

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28 Baby Girls Found in Suitcases in China

BEIJING - Police found 28 baby girls hidden in suitcases aboard a long-distance bus in southern China, apparently being smuggled for sale, a police officer and a newspaper said Saturday.

Officers acting on a tip made the discovery Monday when the bus stopped at an expressway toll plaza in Binyang, a town in the Guangxi region, the Beijing Morning News said. Guangxi, on China's southern coast west of Hong Kong, is one of the country's poorest areas.

An officer of the Guangxi traffic police in Binyang confirmed the discovery of the babies. Reached by telephone, she wouldn't give her name or other details.

Chinese authorities say an unknown number of children are abducted every year for sale to childless families. Older girls are sometimes sold as brides in rural areas with fewer women.

The babies found in Guangxi were all under three months old, and one died after they were found, the Beijing Morning News said. It said the smugglers might have drugged them to keep them from crying and being discovered.

The babies apparently were being smuggled for sale, though police didn't know where they had come from or where they were being taken, the newspaper said. It said the bus was bound from Yulin, a rural district of Guangxi, to the eastern province of Anhui.

No relatives have claimed them, the report said.

Mo has a friend at school who was adopted from China. Not long ago the girl, R., told Mo that she was placed for adoption because her mother had died in childbirth.

While I understand that this could be true, I had doubts (that I didn't mention to Mo) and thought it was kind of mean of her adoptive parents to tell her this. There might come a time when R would like to seek out her family, etc., etc., etc.

But after reading this I thought maybe her adoptive parents were really being kind. Maybe her parents sold her.

I've heard several ideas of why the babies might be being smuggled but I'm thinking that adoption is probably the most lucrative reason that someone would do such a thing.

And seriously, adoption would be the very best thing that could possibly happen to the baby girls when you think of any other reason they might be smuggled.

The whole darn thing is just extremely depressing.

What is this all about?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 14 • Views: 4,110 • Replies: 35

[+3] - boomerang - 02/04/2009Seriously, it isn't just China. I see people trying to sell their American babies on adoption forums all the time. It usually goes something like this: "How does someone go about finding...

This has gone on for a long time, since pre-communist times, and even the communist state at the height of its greatest control has been unable (and perhaps unwilling or disinterested) in doing anything about this. There is a Canadian journalist named Jan Wong ("Bright Precious" Wong, as her name translates from Chinese), who left McGill University in 1971 to go to China, because she genuinely believed in Maoist China, and became one of only two foreign students at Beijing University. Eventually, after the death of Mao, she returned to Canada, got a degree in New York from Columbia University, and then went back to China as a correspondent for a Toronto Newspaper in 1988. She stayed on for several years, and was a witness to the Tiananmen Square massacres.

She describes this in her book Red China Blues, and in particular the kidnapping of young women and even older girls to be wives in regions with few women. In one part of her book, she tells the story of one such woman. It's a horrifying thought, and the lives of babies abducted for sale, and girls and women abducted for sale as virtual slaves, or worse yet to marry men they have never seen, must be harrowing indeed. It's gone on for thousands of years, and it goes on in other places other than China.

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The cruelty of some people is always stunning. When babies are adopted in China no reason is given as to how they ended up in an orphanage. Whether a person adopts through a government or private agency no parental history is offered. I think it's why the parents of Mo's little friend might have given her the "died in childbirth" story. Odds are her American parents do not know the truth.

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@Green Witch,

That's odd...I have a colleague who adopted from China. They are well aware of the child's circumstances, are in touch with he rbirth family, and are about to visit them.

The Chinese are also kidnapping women/girls from neighbouring countries.

The Chinese have aborted or murdered so many baby girls since the one child policy came in (because they wanted boys) that there is a gender imbalance, and many men will not find partners.

Apparently, it is beginning to reverse the traditional sexism of Chinese society, as girls become more prized.

Who would have thought that market forces would have such an effect?

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@dlowan,

They have a terrible problem with female infanticide in India, and in fact, some Indian doctors no longer want to do ultrasound, since some husbands use it find out if the fetus is female, in which case they will insist on abortion.

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@dlowan,

Quote:

That's odd...I have a colleague who adopted from China. They are well aware of the child's circumstances, are in touch with he rbirth family, and are about to visit them.

That indicates your colleague was dealing with an agency that was probably not exclusively Chinese. American agencies (and I assume Austrailian and European agencies) run much cleaner operations. They still have to deal with the Chinese government, but in most cases they abide by the rules of their own country and avoid the corrupt channels available in China.

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I think I read somewhere that Mao wanted Nixon to agree to accept 10 million Chinese girls into the US. I'm not sure where I saw that, but I guess Nixon refused the offer.

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There has been genocide of baby girls in China since they enacted the "1 child per family" policy. A friend of mine adopted two baby girls from China.

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Seriously, it isn't just China. I see people trying to sell their American babies on adoption forums all the time.

It usually goes something like this:

"How does someone go about finding a family who wants to adopt? I'm pregnant and scared?"

"EMAIL ME RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND"

"IGNORE THEM EMAIL ME -- I HAVE LOTS OF MONEY"

"Please don't sell your baby to either of those people. I can help you, I already love you and I know you want the best for your baby."

A few years ago I read a book about the "comfort women" stolen from Korea during WW2 and I didn't think the world could get much worse than that until I read about stolen babies hidden in suitcases.

Some days you wake up and the whole world is a frikken Steven King novel....

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Quote:

It said the smugglers might have drugged them to keep them from crying and being discovered.

Every time I think I have the title of lowest imaginable creature on the planet someone has to come along and prove me wrong.

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I don't see why this should shock anyone.....it is not that much different than the abductions and sale transactions that feed the sex industry. Girls are taken and sold all the time, in a lot of places. We mostly turn a blind eye to it.

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Why does anyone care about 28 random babies on the other side of the world?

Whoop-de-doo

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There are certain cases where I could be described as pro-abortion. Even pro-retroactive-abortion.

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

. . . the abductions and sale transactions that feed the sex industry. Girls are taken and sold all the time, in a lot of places.

And given your expressed proclivities, Rapist Boy, i suspect this is something, the thought of which excites you. Bet you wish you could afford to buy a couple of pubescent sex slaves . . .

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@Xenoche,

Xenoche wrote:

Why does anyone care about 28 random babies on the other side of the world?

Whoop-de-doo

I think gus provided an answer to your post. I think Hawkeye could be included here as well.

Gus wrote:

Quote:

Every time I think I have the title of lowest imaginable creature on the planet someone has to come along and prove me wrong

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it's not just countries that some would consider backwards or savage either

canada has a dark history of residential schools for indigenous peoples, children ripped from reserves and reeducated as "white and christian", adopted to white parents, some told parents were dead when they were not

britian and australia did something similar in the years following ww2, children placed in orphanages sent to australia to help boost the "white race" there, and alleviate the monetary strain on england, many told there parents were dead, youngest ones having names changed, some never knowing who they really were

1 Reply

@djjd62,

Quote:

canada has a dark history of residential schools for indigenous peoples, children ripped from reserves and reeducated as "white and christian", adopted to white parents, some told parents were dead when they were not

I believe the USA is also guilty of this crime against native humanity. I also wonder how many little black babies were sold as chattel.

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@Green Witch,

Quote:

I believe the USA is also guilty of this crime against native humanity.

"Native humanity?" Are you suggesting that there is any portion of the human race who were not born on this planet? Or are you suggesting that Americans of European descent who are born on this continent don't have a right to be considered native?

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@Setanta,

Don't get your panties in a knot. I'm talkin' Red Injuns. You know, the guys with feathers in their spiky hair, big tommyhawks and mokissans.

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@Green Witch,

Why don't you pull your panties out of your own crack. I deeply resent the implication that Americans of European descent have no right to be here, which is implicit in the continued insistence on referring to Amerindians as "native Americans." I was born in New York, and that makes me a native American. I have as much right to be here as anyone else on the North American continent.

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28 baby girls found in suitcases

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