Chinese border police have seized three human traffickers who
tried to smuggle 12 teenagers to Canada by disguising them as
Kungfu masters from the Shaolin Temple.
The three traffickers, including two coaches from a martial arts
school in Songshan of the central Henan Province, home to the 1,500-year-old
temple, charged each teenager US$70,000 to 90,000 to smuggle them
out of the country.
The two coaches, who often accompany students to performing
tours abroad, reached a tacit agreement with a notorious
"snakehead" in Changle, a city in the eastern Fujian Province, to recruit the teenagers as
"martial arts performers from Henan" in May.
The teenagers, aged 17 to 19, were in fact natives of Changle
and knew nothing about martial arts. They received brief training
at a hotel in Henan's provincial capital, Zhengzhou, on June 24 to
learn the basics of lion dancing and to get used to their false
identities.
On June 29, they flew to Shenzhen, a port city in the southern
Guangdong Province, to join a delegation of 16
genuine kungfu performers from the martial arts school who were
scheduled to leave for Canada via Hong Kong the next day.
But the group aroused suspicion and were stopped at the
Huanggang checkpoint, a major entry point into Hong Kong. The 12
bogus performers and the two alleged coaches, surnamed Feng and
Chen, were detained by Shenzhen border police and returned to
Fujian for interrogation.
The alleged snakehead from Changle, an unemployed man in his 30s
surnamed Huang, was arrested on Monday after six weeks on the
run.
A spokesman with the border police in Changle said the case had
been a deal between the two coaches and Huang. "The Shaolin Temple
had nothing to do with it," an officer surnamed Wang told Xinhua in
a telephone interview.
Wang said the three traffickers had smuggled 14 people out of
China last year, by passing them off as kungfu performers alongside
real masters from their martial arts school, which had become
famous internationally for teaching Shaolin kungfu.
Many amateur kungfu practitioners in Henan claim they are
Shaolin masters in order to recruit students from other parts of
the country.
The Shaolin Temple at Songshan Mountain has drawn foreign
dignitaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and
International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.
(Xinhua News Agency August 11, 2007)