A Chinese court has upheld the death sentence of a woman who trafficked more than a dozen children in the 1990s, in a case that has gripped the country, state media reports.
Yu Huaying was sentenced to death again on Friday, after a retrial, taking into account additional evidence, found that she sold 17 children, not 11 as the 2023 trial concluded.
The case first came to light in 2022, when a woman she had trafficked for 3,500 yuan ($491; £378) in 1995 reported her ordeal to police in the southeastern city of Guiyang. western China.
Yang Niuhua, who was already in his 30s at that time, was searching for his family and documented his search on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Ms. Yang was finally reunited with her relatives after a DNA test, only to learn that both of her parents had died a few years after her abduction in Guizhou province.
Ms Yang's report led police to arrest Yu, who was in court during the sentencing on Friday.
The court also deprived Yu of all his political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of all his property.
“Yu Huaying’s subjective wickedness is extremely deep, his criminal behavior is particularly heinous, and the consequences of his actions are serious, warranting severe punishment. Even if she confessed, that is not enough to justify a lighter sentence,” the court said.
According to state media, Yu's first victim was her own son, whom she sold for 5,000 yuan when she was in her 20s.
The boy's father, Gong Xianliang, would eventually become Yu's partner in child trafficking. Gong died after Yu's arrest.
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“The pain the traffickers have caused me is indescribable and the rift in my family can never be repaired,” she said in November last year, according to the English-language Global Times.
State media reported that some relatives of Yu's victims suffered from depression and that the ordeal led the families to separate.
The court said Yu built a “complete criminal chain” of child trafficking, finding children in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces and Chongqing municipality in the south and selling them in northern Hebei through middlemen. , according to reports.
Yu was detained for two months in 2000 for child kidnapping and in 2004 he was sentenced to eight years in prison for a similar offense.
Human trafficking has long been a concern in China and cases spark outrage when they come to light, such as when a woman trafficked into marriage was found in chains in Jiangsu province last year.
When China's one-child policy was in effect, a cultural preference for male children led to the trafficking of unwanted baby girls.
