Police have reunited a child abducted 10 years ago with his family in southwest China's Yunnan Province with the help of a new DNA database, police said Wednesday.
The 12-year-old boy returned home to Kunming, the provincial capital, by plane Tuesday, to become China's first child to be reunited with his family through the DNA database which was set up in May, Kunming police said.
In June, police learned a suspect surnamed Zhou abducted a two-year-old boy in 1999 in Kunming and sold him to Dehua County in east China's Fuujian Province, said Pu Jun, an anti-abduction police officer at the police station in Guandu District, Kunming.
The station sent officers to Dehua. The police also found a father surnamed Liu who reported a missing boy in 1999, Pu said.
The boy was found in the home of a villager surnamed Chen in Dehua on June 24. Liu went to the village with the police, but he could not recognize the child after 10 years of separation.
The police tested the child's blood sample and checked it with Liu's through the DNA database.
"The boy had entered school when we found him," said Pu. "We will let him meet his father. The farmers who bought him will come to Kunming to discuss how to raise the child in the future."
To combat child trafficking, the Ministry of Public Security has set up a DNA database to link all the country's 236 DNA laboratories so that they can share information about missing children.
The database includes DNA from the parents of abducted children and samples will be taken from children who are suspected of having been abducted or vagrant children with an unclear history.
(Xinhua News Agency July 1, 2009)
