Our reporter in Bengbu, April 16 - Instead of using her knowledge to find a proper job to change her life after graduating from university, Zhang Xiumei engaged in the illegal activities of buying and selling infants. Today, the Bengbu Railway Transportation Court in Anhui Province sentenced her to five years in prison for child trafficking and fined her 10,000 yuan.
Zhang Xiumei, 25 years old, graduated from a higher normal college in Yunnan Province in June 2009. After graduation, she did not actively look for work but embarked on the wrong path of trafficking children for profit. In October 2009, she bought a male infant for more than 10,000 yuan in Huize County. She then took the infant to Wanjian Township in Jiangle County, Fujian Province, falsely claiming that the baby was her illegitimate child and that she could not support it as she was about to graduate from university. Through three intermediaries (who have all been convicted), she sold the infant for over 40,000 yuan.
On January 3 this year, she was preparing to take another male infant she had bought to Jiangle County for sale when railway police discovered her suspicious behavior on the train to Fujian. After being questioned, Zhang Xiumei confessed to the crime of trafficking children.
After reviewing the case, the court believed that defendant Zhang Xiumei's actions of selling infants with the intent to sell constituted the crime of child trafficking and should be punished according to law; considering that she voluntarily confessed her crimes after being questioned and educated by public security personnel on the passenger train due to suspicious behavior, this should be regarded as self-surrender, which allows for leniency in punishment.
(By Zheng Yan and Bao Zhi)