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Q: Have you ever seen a Chinese toddler & suspected that it may be trafficked?
Yesterday I sat on the subway opposite a family with a little toddler who looked really scared. He was with a middle-aged woman who looked like a migrant worker and a pale-skinned man in his 30's wearing a shirt and carrying a small leather man-purse under his armpits. Everything from their appearance to the way they carried themselves looked like a complete misfit. I thought that maybe she was selling the toddler to the guy or that they were on their way somewhere to transfer the child. It's plausible but then again, what do I know. As I was watching them, I did wonder what you would do in this case. Should you confront them and potentially cause a huge scene and perhaps embarrass yourself for falsely accusing someone of a very big crime without any hard evidence? Call the police? Just suppress your suspicions? What would you do?
10 years 43 weeks ago in Health & Safety - China
I often see a lot of Chinese children who look nothing like either parent. Asians do not all look the same to me, and I never forget a face (unless I only got a glimpse of it), so I'm sometimes suspicious about that as well. However, that child could've been scared because of the subway, and because of all the people on it.
The "parents" also could've been up to a completely different crime than trafficking.
Human trafficking is a serious problem in China. If I knew for sure -- for damn sure! -- that a child was being trafficked, I would cause a huge scene and call the police. However, in that situation, and not knowing the details, I'd probably just non-chalantly follow them for a bit to make sure everything was okay, and report anything suspicious to the police.
I went to do my residence certificate at the police station once, and there was this policeman loudly questioning a woman and a little girl. My ex-girlfriend told me that the police was suspecting that the child wasn't hers. The little girl was terrified and wouldn't answer the policeman's questions and kept looking at the woman multiple times. Obviously she had already worked the girls mind before
If you confront them on the subway, they might just all deny everything, and the kid might also do the same by fear. You can try to call the police as soon as you suspect those people, even if it's in front of them. There are cameras on the subway and subway station, so it might help the police to identify them.
