The mastermind behind an illegal emigration plot was sentenced
last Friday to 15 years' imprisonment, reported Guangxi-based
Nanguo Morning Post on Monday.
Wang Xuemin is former president of the Weiqi Institute of
Guilin, a tourist city in the Guangxi
Zhuang Autonomous Region. Weiqi is a strategic
two-player board game, thought to have originated in China but
popular throughout East Asia, also known as "Chinese Go."
Wang applied to the Japan-China Culture Association in April
2003 to send a team for a friendly match of weiqi. The
association accepted, inviting him and 30 other people to
Japan.
Wang and an accomplice, Xiao Jun, recruited 30 people in east
China's Fujian
Province.
He took 14 of them to Osaka via Hong Kong on November 25, but
they disappeared soon after they arrived. Wang quickly returned,
but the association reported the case to Japan's foreign affairs
authority, which in turn reported it to Chinese Ministry of Foreign
Affairs.
The following investigation found that Wang and his accomplices
were paid more than 800,000 yuan (US$96,385) by the emigrants,
210,000 yuan (US$25,300) of which went to Xiao and 150,000
(US$18,000) to Wang.
Xinhua News Agency?reported that Xiao and his accomplices
were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment on November 12.
However, no details of the whereabouts of the 14 supposed
weiqi players have been reported.
In another case last week in Kunming, capital of Yunnan
Province, 58 suspected stowaways and their "snakehead" were
arrested by local police.
The bust was the biggest ever for Yunnan's border police,
reported the Beijing Youth Daily.
Local police reported in October 2004, that a group of illegal
emigrants was set to start off from Xiamen, Fujian, and head for
Myanmar through Kunming.
Police first took the snakehead surnamed He into custody and
then caught the 58 people suspected of planning the illegal
emigration on November 2 after two of them arrived in Kunming by
train.
The stowaways planned to go from Myanmar to Brazil before going
on to the UK to look for jobs. The case is still under
investigation.
(China Daily November 16, 2004)