CHINA. MAN GETS DEATH PENALTY FOR TRAFFICKING CHILDREN TO SINGAPORE

Ke Pangjie, a man convicted of running a child trafficking ring that sold 44 children to Singapore over a five-year period, was sentenced in China's southeastern city of Quanzhou, with partners Wu Wenbin and Sheng Zhenzhong getting life imprisonment and 15 years in jail respectively.
The court said the severity of the verdict reflected the large number of children sold beginning in 1998, with no hope of winning their return. In 1998 Ke met He Yidi, a person running an adoption agency in Singapore. While He and an accomplice set about identifying families in Singapore that wanted to adopt a child, Ke searched for children in Fujian's Quanzhou, Yongchun and Anxi cities. It was reported that the children were bought from willing parents for between 5,000 to 10,000 yuan (600 to 1,200 US dollars) and were then shipped to the Southeast Asian city state. Once in Singapore, they were sold for at least 8,000 Singapore dollars.