China Blog Helps To Trace Kidnapped Children
14, February, 2011 8 Comments
There’s been recent news of how a microblog set up in China has helped to reunite parents with their long-lost abducted children. Set up on China’s Sina.com by a Chinese professor,Yu Jianrong, known for “championing the rights of China’s huge underclass”, the microblog gets people to take photos of child beggars and orphans and upload them to the site. One could easily send photos to the campaign’s email address: jiejiuqier@sina.com or use the mobile app for it.
It was just one such photo that led to the happy reunion of a father and his six-year-old boy who had been kindnapped three years earlier. Six other children have apparently been able to have happy reunions with their families, through the help of the microblog.
These have captured the attention of the Chinese government and have sparked renewed efforts by the state police to crack down on such abductions. The sad plight of kidnapped children who are often forced into a life of slavery and hardship have been documented in various websites and blogs. One example is a project on Kickstarter that features documentary on the issue.
Unfortunately, just as the microblog has been hailed as a success in helping to rescue some of the children from their sad plight, there are others who now say that the online campaign is flawed and has put the children’s lives in greater danger. Because of the sudden interest in taking photos of the child beggars and posting them online, some say that the kidnappers will now resort to more serious ways such as disfiguring the children to prevent them from being recognised by their families.
Thankfully, efforts to rescue kidnapped children will be more sustained. There will be a special fund set up for long-term help for a nationwide crackdown on child begging. Yang Peng, secretary-general of the One Foundation, announced on his sina.com.cn micro blog on Saturday that a dedicated fund will be established and affiliated to the charitable organisation.
Let’s hope that with sustained and concerted efforts by all, there could be a stop to this ruthless problem and the children can be protected.
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i feel that the parent was actually quite clever because who would have thought of using a blog to find his child because from what i know most to all parents would go out to search for their children instead of using a blog to do so.
This shows that new media now is very influential. Almost everyone uses the Internet, even in China. You can do anything on the Internet. I am very glad that the child was found and is now happily reunion with his family.
Finding his own son through the media is counted as one of the luckiest thing ever in life. The 3 years of searching and everything should be painful for the family. It was just a single photo to find back his adopted child. This shows that media is very important in our life
I am glad to see that the father found her kid back, I had read this news on the news web of China. They said the child could not recognize his father at the first place, after like few seconds, he remember his father then hug his father and cried.
China should not ban so many new media network as this article prove that new media does help in one way or another. And, finding back an abducted child is very rare and this man here is very very lucky. Hope more children will saved.
Looks like people have found another useful and innovative use of new media and social media to help solve a problem.
i think it’s a good way to reunite the children with their parents, this is because new media sites can spread fast and wide, thus more information would reach more people online. However, because of this people might try other methods to disfigure the children and thus creating ways to make them more difficult to reunite them with their original families.
So in this there are pros and cons in the issues, it may be a good way if they take the right initiative to stop the issue and overcome them by taking corrective actions.
The idea of using New Media to save kidnapped children is a very good idea, but, as we have learned, there are people out there abusing the use of New Media.
Maybe the blog creator can collaborate with organisations to increase the effectiveness of this idea, while at the same time, any kidnappers can be traced, found, and then put them into justice.