贩卖儿童量刑之争|Should child traffickers be sentenced to death?
It started with a photo captioned “China should change its legislation on child trafficking. People trafficking children should be sentenced to death.”
As soon as the picture was posted, it was supported by thousands of people online who shared it on Sina Weibo and Wechat –two major Chinese social media platforms.
But opposition voices emerged later on Wednesday, with legal scholars and sociologists holding that the appeal for death is not rational, and that crimes should be handled more objectively.
They also proposed solutions, including more severe punishments for the buyers, given that one of the key problems is the strong market demand.
“The reason why child trafficking is rampant is that there is a huge buyers’ market, and the profits are high,” Xinhua News Agency cited Li Xuesong, an official from a court in southwest area's Qujing city, Yunnan Province, as saying.
Li has handled many trafficking cases in the past years and drew his opinion based on that experience. He explained that many people in rural China prefer boys to girls and are thus willing to pay a lot of money to buy them.
Some scholars are also against the appeal by arguing that extreme punishments will put the abducted children in danger and that its deterrence value is actually limited.
“If all child traffickers were sentenced to death, the criminals will turn to desperados and the abducted children will be in danger (they may kill them),” said Jiang Xiaoyan, a legal scholar.
“The power of penal laws is actually limited,” said Gu Yongzhong, a law professor from China University of Political Science and Law. “Although [there is a Chinese saying that] ‘a murderer must repay with his own life’, but murders have never been stopped,” Gu explained.
China currently gives sentences to child traffickers ranging from five to ten years in jail, depending on the nature of the crimes.
Only people involved in severe cases, including those who organized large-scale child trafficking, or abducting children using violence could possibly face death penalty.
Over 7,700 human trafficking cases were reported in China from 2010 to 2014, with more than 12,900 traffickers and buyers punished, according to the Supreme People's Court in February. The number has dropped compared to 2013.