Police deny eye-gouging linked to trafficking
Print Edition
Police in Fenxi County of the northern province of Shanxi said they have a video footage from a surveillance camera which showed a woman, with dyed yellow hair, with the six-year-old boy whose eyes she later gouged out.
The woman is seen leading the boy, identified only as Binbin, past a waste recycling station, The Beijing News reported yesterday.
Fenxi police have offered a 100,000 yuan (US$16,340) reward for information leading to the capture of the woman.
Earlier reports said the boy’s eyeballs were found with the corneas missing, triggering suspicions that it was linked to illegal organ trading. But police yesterday dismissed that theory although they did not offer any other explanation. All they would say was that the corneas were found attached to the eyeballs. “We are still working on it so we cannot offer any comment or make any assumption on the motives,” AFP quoted a Fenxi officer as saying.
Doctors said the boy is likely to be blind for life as his nerves are damaged. They plan to implant artificial eyeballs in the eye sockets later, his uncle, surnamed Guo, told the Beijing Youth Daily.
The boy has not been told he has been blinded and keeps asking his family why the sun has not risen yet, the Beijing Youth Daily said.
“He asks why the sky is always dark ... why it is not morning yet,” the paper quoted Guo as saying.
“We only tell him that he has some injury to the eyes and they are bandaged. It is difficult to explain it to him. It is the most heartbreaking thing,” he said.
Guo said Binbin was playing with a neighbor on Saturday evening when he heard someone calling out his name.
The woman took him to a field nearby and dug out his eyeballs, Binbin said. With an out-of-town accent, she reportedly told him: “Don’t cry. If you stop crying, I won’t scoop your eyes out.”
Binbin is still in the Shanxi Eye Hospital where he underwent a surgery. He is in stable condition.
Since Binbin was born with cleft lips, the Smile Angle Foundation, a Beijing-based charity, has decided to pay for a surgery in Beijing. But his family said the priority is to get the artificial eyeballs.
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