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| News: China to crackdown on human trafficking amid growing gender imbalance |
Agence France-Presse English Wire: BEIJING, Sept 7 (AFP) - Chinese police have intensified a crackdown on trafficking of women and children as increasing numbers of females are sold into marriage in areas where gender imbalances are growing , state press said Monday.
Yunnan Provincial Public Security Bureau vice director Xian Yanming called for the stepped up measures after a "large number" of recent abductions, the China Daily reported.
Southwest Yunnan province is one of the worst affected areas. Some 85 abducted women and children were rescued by police between April and July this year, although it was not clear how many had been reported missing.
"The trafficked women are usually sold to men in areas such as Henan province, where there is a gender imbalance and many men find it difficult to find a wife," the paper said.
Since 2000, police in Yunnan have arrested more than 6,000 suspects who have been accused of kidnapping 3,956 women and 839 children in over 2,600 abduction cases, the report said.
I n March the government revealed the enormity of the problem nationwide when it announced that over 42,000 women and children had been rescued from abductors in the three years from 2001 .
However, the state did not reveal how many kidnapped women and children had yet to be traced.
Baby boys have traditionally been the target of abductors, but kidnappers are increasingly targeting baby girls.
In one case last year, 28 baby girls were found drugged and stuffed in bags on a long distance bus in southwestern Guizhou province.
China's "one child" birth control policy, coupled with the country's long tradition of favoring baby boys, have been seen as the catalysts for the country's huge human trafficking industry.
In the early 1980s there were 107 male births to every 100 female births, according to official statistics,
That ratio has grown to 117 boys to 100 women in recent years as female fetuses have increasingly been aborted.
Such an imbalance means that up to 15 percent of China's male population could be without a female partner in the coming decades, experts say.
<<Agence France-Presse English Wire -- 09/07/04>>
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