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October 28, 2011

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Child snatchers fake birth papers

CERTIFICATES issued by health authorities to register permanent residency for newborns have been found on sale for as much as 13,000 yuan (US$2,047) on the black market.

Eleven birth certificates lost by a maternity hospital in Xinyang City, central China's Henan Province, were sold to villagers in Yong'an City in southeastern Fujian Province.

Two middlemen who facilitated the sale have been arrested on charges of illegally trading government documents, according to Legal Daily.

Each newborn's birth certificate is used to register for residency, known as hukou in Chinese.

Legal Daily said if such a document can be accessed privately, it can be used to establish a legitimate identity for babies bought from human traffickers, thus undermining police efforts to crack down on human trafficking.

If a child does not have a hukou, or the hukou is not registered in the same place as the parents, police will look into the child's origin to establish whether he or she has been kidnapped or sold by human traffickers, according to Lin Xinjian, deputy director of Yong'an Public Security Bureau.

But if a child obtains a hukou using a falsified birth certificate, there is no way police can check the infant's origin, Lin added.

Yong'an police grew suspicious after 11 families registered babies using birth certificates from Xinyang Maternity Hospital, more than 1,000 kilometers away. It was discovered none of these families went to the hospital to deliver their children.

Wu Lian and Zhu Xia, both residents of Yong'an, confessed they sold the documents at prices ranging from 5,000 to 13,000 yuan, Legal Daily said.

Wu and Zhu said they obtained the documents from an unknown person.

Xinyang Health Bureau launched an investigation into the maternity hospital and found birth certificates were not handled properly.

Xinyang Maternity Hospital blamed negligent management for the loss of the certificates. It pledged to tighten internal management procedures to prevent such things from happening, according to the report.




 

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