A screen reads "strictly crack down on abducting and trafficking women and children, protect womenand children's rights." Photo: VCG

A Chinese expert calls for a campaign to check women trafficking cases in the country amid the controversial woman trafficking case in Xuzhou city, Jiangsu Province. The Chinese central government has promised to crack down on violations of women's personal rights in a recent government document.

"Women trafficking is a violation of basic human rights that has become a global issue," Qi Jianjian, a deputy research fellow at the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an article published on the China Women's News on Tuesday.

On the same day, the Chinese central government's annual "No 1 Document" was issued. It focuses on issues concerning safeguarding stability in vast Chinese villages, including cracking down on all violations of women and children's personal rights.       

Many countries have enacted laws to crack down on women trafficking, but violations still cannot be stopped, Qi said in the article. 

Qi said that it is urgent for China to implement the Outline for Women's Development in China (2021-2030) and the 10-year action plan to combat human trafficking. She called for a nationwide campaign to check women trafficking cases in the country, complete rescue mechanism for abducted women and ferret out criminal chains. 

Qi noted that the campaign should focus on places that have a severely unbalanced gender ratio in outlying poor regions.

She suggested stricter punishments on human buyers, as they would often rape the victims, force them to hard labor, and kidnap and hurt their victims. She noted the thought that the buyers share less liabilities in human trafficking than the sellers, are wrong.    

Technological methods like DNA, GPS and facial recognition should also be fully used to help enhance the crackdown against women trafficking. The system of the Chinese public security to look for abducted children could also be used to collect and share DNA information of families of trafficked women, Qi said.   

Qi's suggestions came amid the controversial case of a trafficking case in which a woman in Fengxian county in Xuzhou city was suspected to have given birth to eight children. The case went viral after the woman was found chained in a rural house.

The provincial government of Jiangsu announced on Wednesday that a total of 17 people have been punished or put under investigation after investigation into the case.

Global Times