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Officials accused of seizing baby girls to sell overseas
Local officials have been accused of seizing baby girls from parents who broke birth control limits and helping hand them on to adoptive parents overseas for the equivalent of about £1,800 each (Dh10,800), Chinese media have reported.
- Guardian News & Media Ltd
- Published: 23:04 July 4, 2009
Guizhou: Local officials have been accused of seizing baby girls from parents who broke birth control limits and helping hand them on to adoptive parents overseas for the equivalent of about £1,800 each (Dh10,800), Chinese media have reported.
Six officials have been punished after children were wrongly sent to an orphanage, local authorities in Guizhou province, south-west China, confirmed. The authorities were still looking into the role of the institution in the affair.
"According to our investigation it is true that babies who have parents were forced into the orphanage and then abroad," an official from the Zhenyuan county family planning bureau told a newspaper which uncovered the story.
The Southern Metropolis News said family planning officers removed the children when their parents could not afford to pay the fine for excess births.
The Chinese newspaper Time Weekly reported claims that officials forged documents stating that the babies were orphans, and that they split adoption fees with the orphanage.
The newspaper also said that almost 80 infants from Zhenyuan had been adopted by American and European families since 2001, although many were genuine orphans or given up voluntarily.
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