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China moving to punish kidnappers
By Evan Osnos (chicagotribune)
Updated: 2006-01-23 09:09
At a bicycle-parts factory in the go-go city of Shenzhen, a grim drama began
this month when a group of men barged into a factory office and confronted owner
Lau Siu-fan.
A girl is saved and
taken away by police officers after being kidnapped in suburbs of
Shanghai on May 8, 2005. A man from Central China's Hunan
Province held a girl hostage near a supermarket and forced
the girl's father to drive his car to run away. Police
officers succeeded in saving the girl by taking
actions four hours later after efforts of negotiation
failed. [newsphoto] |
Still held hours
later on Jan. 3, the Hong Kong businessman phoned his wife and said he had been
beaten and his office was being looted. Lau told her he had repeatedly called
police, though two officers came and left, declaring the affair a "business
dispute."
The next afternoon Lau was spotted by a local reporter, still trapped in his
office, in tears, and the captors vowed to hold him until he paid millions of
Chinese yuan to a scrap-metal vendor.
Since then, the businessman's and his wife's mobile phones have been turned
off. Police say they know nothing of the case, and reporters have been turned
away each time they attempt to visit the factory.
In the shadows of China's rapid economic ascent, such cases pose a problem
for the rich. A wave of kidnappings, extortion and related crimes is rising amid
the wheeling and dealing on China's economic frontier.
In the first official data disclosed on kidnapping for ransom, Chinese
authorities reported 3,863 abductions in 2004. That is higher than the longtime
world leader in kidnapping, Colombia, which recorded 3,000 abductions a year
from 1996 to 2003--though Colombia has only a fraction of China's population.
Security analysts suspect the true tally is higher in both countries, because
most kidnappings go unreported.
'An old business'
"Kidnapping is an old business, but in the last 10 years it has exploded,"
said Tom Clayton, founder of San Diego-based Clayton Consultants, a corporate
security firm that handles kidnapping cases for the American International
Group, known as AIG.
"We don't know where it's going in China. But it looks like the beginning of
what we have seen in other countries over the past 25 or 30 years. They begin to
take place when circumstances are right, generally meaning a lack of local
authority and the money to make it worthwhile."
Companies that track kidnappings say criminal gangs are responsible for most
of the world's cases, which generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year in
ransom. A smaller share is orchestrated by armed insurgencies, as in Iraq, where
on Jan. 7 American Jill Carroll became the 36th journalist abducted in that
country since April 2004. An unknown number of other foreigners and Iraqis also
have been abducted in Iraq in the past three years, with estimates in the
thousands.
In the highest-profile case so far, Chinese sitcom star Wu Ruopu was yanked
from his BMW in February 2004 outside a Beijing bar. Kidnappers demanded
$245,000 in ransom before police found and freed him the next day, according to
media reports. Shortly after that, authorities arrested nine men. Like many
other kidnapping victims, Wu shuns publicity, saying only that he wishes to
forget the episode.
China is moving aggressively to punish kidnappers, often by the death
penalty. Three of the convicted kidnappers in Wu's case reportedly were executed
in September. In total, authorities said that 2,900 cases of kidnapping were
"solved" in 2004, but it is unclear whether that means the victim survived, the
culprits were caught or there was some other resolution. The government issued
an unusual warning last year to the newly rich to beware that kidnappers often
kill their victims even when money is paid.
Beijing entrepreneur Cui Fengxian founded Beijing Capital Special Security
the day after Wu's kidnapping became public. Today, Cui says he oversees 200
personal guards, offering black-suited and plainclothes staff for movie stars,
directors, corporate bigwigs and private schools.
"For instance, if a client needs to carry a large amount of cash . . . we can
provide a reliable person to do that," said Cui, his office filled with
snapshots of him with clients, as well as an imposing variety of swords and
animal sculptures.
"The gap between rich and poor is getting bigger, and there will be more
problems," he added. "There is a saying in China: You will laugh at those poorer
than you and hate those richer than you."
Still relatively safe
Compared with other developing countries, China remains relatively safe; U.S.
State Department travel advice says China "has a fairly low but increasing crime
rate."
Street crime in most of the country is trivial, though the annual
kidnapping-for-ransom tally does not include thousands of mostly rural Chinese
women and children criminally trafficked each year for labor or sale.
The rise in kidnappings for cash is a measure of social change in a nation
that has long feared that greater freedom and economic growth could bring a
breakdown in social stability.
Unpublished statistics obtained by a Hong Kong-based security firm indicate
the government recorded only five kidnappings nationwide in 1984 and 29 in 1987.
But opening the window to the free market has created a class of conspicuous
consumers and widened gaps between rich and poor.
In one case, police searching the apartment of kidnappers in Guangdong
province found a list of all BMW owners in the city that appeared to have come
from state vehicle registration rolls, said Jack Chu, founder of R.A.
Consultants, a Hong Kong-based security firm that has handled kidnapping cases
in mainland China.
As in much of the world, kidnapping in China is brazen. Most abductions
happen in plain view, on predictable routes to home and work.
"They study their potential targets to figure out whether they are rich and
will be able to pay," Chu said. "They see what kind of restaurants and markets
they go to and then they decide who is the easiest to kidnap."
In some cases, the easiest targets are children at expensive private schools.
Headlines about child kidnappings prompted one Beijing elementary school to hire
seven guards, some of them former soldiers, to patrol the grounds and escort
students to waiting cars.
"Some people want bodyguards just for their vanity," said Zhaung Tao, a
school board member, "but for us, it's just about protecting the children."
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