Crackdown follows rise in people smuggling

By Cui Xiaohuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-11 09:40

Police will beef up efforts to prevent human trafficking after a spike in the number of cases involving women and children.

Zhang Xinfeng, vice-minister of public security, announced a new crackdown on the deadly underground trade on Friday.

"The country has seen an increase in incidents of trafficking women and children in some regions recently, despite police vigilance in fighting such crimes," Zhang said.

The crackdown follows the recent arrest of two men from Guangdong province that attempted to smuggle hundreds of teenagers into Costa Rica.

In a crackdown to run until December this year, police would also target offenders who seduce or force children to beg on the streets or commit crimes, especially gang organizers, Zhang said.

Statistics show police foil more than 2,000 attempts to smuggle people over China's borders each year.

Teenage girls and young women are the most vulnerable to human traffickers.

About 63 percent of teenagers smuggled out of China are tricked into leaving their parents or are kidnapped, the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP) said.

Teenagers are often smug-gled across the borders of China's southwest region, such as Yunnan and Guangxi, into neighboring countries like Vietnam and Myanmar.

Teenage girls are frequently traded as sex workers and boys are often forced to work in illegal factories.

"We must firmly tackle the rise of the trafficking cases," Zhang said.

The State Council established the China National Plan of Action on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children (2008-12) in 2007.

Dr. Jiang Feng, coordinator of the UNIAP in Beijing, said the number of human trafficking cases in China was not large, but there was room for the government to toughen its measures.

"The government should tackle both the buyers and the sellers in the business, because both parties are responsible for the trade," she said.