China's top court upholds child trafficker's death sentence

Child trafficker Yu Huaying was executed on Friday after China's top court approved her death sentence.

The execution was carried out by the Guiyang Intermediate People's Court in Guizhou province, where Yu was convicted of abducting and trafficking children and given the death penalty.

Before the 61-year-old was executed, the court allowed her to meet her family members, fully protecting the legitimate rights of the criminal.

On Oct 25, the court sentenced Yu to death after identifying that Yu, between 1993 and 2003, abducted 17 children in Guizhou, Chongqing and Yunnan provinces, and then sold the victims to Handan in Hebei province for financial gains.

The court also stripped of her political rights for life and ordered that all her personal assets be confiscated.

Yu appealed to a higher court, but the Guizhou High People's Court later rejected her appeal and upheld the original ruling and submitted the death sentence to the Supreme People's Court, China's top court, for review.

Under the Chinese law, death sentences issued by lower courts must be reviewed and approved by the top court before executions are implemented.

Yu and her case attracted widespread public attention since 2022 when police in Guiyang received a report from Yang Niuhua, alleging she was snatched by Yu in Guizhou and taken to Hebei in 1995. Soon after the report, police captured Yu from Chongqing.

During the trial, the Guiyang court said that the abduction and trafficking had separated 12 families, making some parents spend many years searching for their children or even die of depression.

The court added it imposed the death penalty on Yu, because the malice of Yu was extremely deep, and the circumstance of her criminal behaviors was extremely serious, and the consequence of the crime was extremely severe.