On October 25, 2023, the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court in Guizhou Province publicly announced its judgment in the case of defendant Yu Huaying, who was charged with child trafficking. The court sentenced Yu to death, revoked her political rights for life, and ordered the confiscation of all her personal property.
The case was sent back for retrial by the Guizhou Provincial High Court, leading the People’s Procuratorate of Guiyang to add charges against Yu for trafficking six children, including a child identified as Li. After a thorough investigation, the Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court found that between 1993 and 2003, Yu, along with accomplices Gong Xianliang (now deceased) and Wang Jiawen (charged in a separate case), engaged in trafficking activities across Guizhou, Chongqing, and Yunnan provinces. They targeted children and, once they had abducted them, took the victims to Handan City, Hebei Province, where they sought buyers through intermediaries, ultimately trafficking a total of 17 children.
The court determined that Yu’s actions, driven by a desire for illegal profit, resulted in the separation of 12 families, causing irreparable emotional harm. Many parents have spent years searching for their lost children, suffering immense distress in the process. The court characterized Yu’s malice as profound, her crimes as particularly heinous, and the consequences of her actions as extremely serious, thus warranting severe punishment. Despite her confession, it was deemed insufficient for leniency, resulting in the aforementioned sentence. Yu expressed her intention to appeal the decision.
In November 2023, the Guizhou Provincial High Court is set to publicly hear the appeal in Yu’s child trafficking case. By January 2024, a ruling from the high court acknowledged that the original judgment had overlooked additional child trafficking facts involving Yu that were unclear, necessitating a retrial to fully unravel the extent of her crimes.
