China on this date in 2009 executed two men for trafficking kidnapped children.
“The crimes of children trafficking are on the rise,” said a spokesman for the Supreme People’s Court. “Children trafficking gangs now have clearer division of work and more children of migrant workers have been abducted.”
Kidnapping has been a major problem in China for many years, one which authorities have fought in vain with ever-strengthened legal sanctions. Needless to say the executions marked this date hardly abated the trend.
Up to 70,000 children are thought to disappear by abduction in China every year — particularly boys, for whom there is a lucrative market.
The men executed Nov. 26, 2009 seem to have emerged right from this unfortunate suq: 55-year-old 55-year-old Hu Minghua of Yunan Province was condemned for trafficking seven different children, plus heroin besides; 27-year-old Su Binde of Henan Province had six child abductions to his name over the course of just 10 months. (Su also led an armed robbery gang in Liuyuan Township that killed at least one man.)
On this day..
- 1954: Jonas Žemaitis, Lithuanian Forest Brother - 2019
- 1766: John Clark and James Felton - 2018
- 1736: James Matthews and Elizabeth Greenley - 2017
- 1936: Vladimir Mutnykh, Bolshoi director - 2016
- 1948: Hans Karl Möser, for rocketry - 2014
- 1933: Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes lynched in St. James Park - 2013
- 1678: William Staley, "the prologue to the bloody tragedy" - 2012
- 1937: Peljidiin Genden, former Mongolia Prime Minister - 2011
- Daily Double: Stalinism east to west - 2011
- 1940: Jilava Massacre - 2010
- 1600: Hansel Pappenheimer, following his family - 2009
- 1849: Sheikh Bouzian, defending Zaatcha - 2008
- 1919: Felipe Angeles - 2007