Thursday, October 13, 2011

Child Trafficking & Weibo

At China Hush, an article about using Weibo (China's version of Twitter) to find kidnapped children; I found this little story stunning:
In the process of conducting interviews for our film, I’ve learned that one of the things that makes kidnapping so simple is that in many areas of the country, parents who buy kidnapped children can count on their neighbors to stay quiet about it. In the case of one adult who was kidnapped as a child that we spoke to, for example, he showed up at his new "home" speaking a different dialect, and went around actively telling neighbors that this wasn’t his home, and telling them his real parents’ names. At school, kids used to mock him because he’d been purchased by his parents, and he got into fights often. Yet none of his neighbors reported his kidnapping to the police until over a decade later. By that time, of course, it was way too late to find his original family.

Part of the problem is the social attitude that it’s dangerous to get involved with other people’s problems. . . .
Wow.  Just wow.