Police from Putian City in Fujian Province have broken up a baby-trafficking ring that traded in 70 or more children over a period of 10 years.

The 104-member network, 40 suspected members of which have been arrested, traded in infants from Yunnan, Fujian, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangdong and Heilongjiang provinces as well as from Myanmar.

At the beginning of 2004, Putian police received letters accusing Li Meilan, a midwife living in Dongshan Village, of selling six children using fake twins birth certificates.

During their investigation, they found that the birth certificates of four of the six children in Li's house were clearly counterfeit, one even saying that each of a pair of twins were born in different hospitals.

Further investigations found that Li had been working with a major human trafficking ring including rural women, hospital staff, and village midwives. Many of the smuggled babies had traveled with breast-feeding women who claimed the babies were theirs.

On April 16, the police set up a special investigation team and, after a three-month inquiry, began to realize the extent of the network's reach and just how long it had been operating. The ringleaders were identified as Zhang Xiuhua, Weng Yuyin and Lin Haishu.

On August 5, Zhang was arrested along with Wang Meihong at Fuzhou Railway Station whilst buying a one-month-old infant from Chen Youfen, from Yunnan.

The same day, police seized over 20 suspects with another three infants in Putian. Two of the babies were only one month old.??

On August 12, Lin Shuhai and another five suspects were apprehended in Dongzhuang County, and two more children rescued.

With the help of Yunnan police, Ye Jinhong was arrested in?a town of Ruili for trafficking infants from Myanmar on August 15.

On December 2, another 24 infants were rescued, including seven from Myanmar, and three suspects arrested in Yunnan and 5 in Fujian.

Of the 40 arrested so far, 29 have been women and 11 men. Forty-four of the estimated 70 trafficked babies have been rescued, and the hometowns of 29 of them traced.

(China.org.cn by Wu Nanlan February 5, 2005)