Recently on October 15, SCMP shared the heartbreaking story of a Chinese woman who was kidnapped as a child and her relentless efforts to seek justice.
Yang Niuhua, born in 1990 in a village in Chi Kim district, Guizhou province (China), was kidnapped by Yu Huaying, a 61-year-old neighbor, in November 1995.
The 5-year-old girl was taken to Ham Dan, Hebei Province, a place about 2,000km from her hometown, and sold to another family for 3,500 yuan.
According to the arbitration People's Court of Guyiang, Yu kidnapped a total of 17 children from 12 families across China in the 1990s. This is considered the most serious mass child kidnapping in China in the past 10 years.
Yang Niuhua, renamed Li Suya, lives in a new family with a deaf-mute father surnamed Li and a grandmother. She was often beaten and had to drop out of school at the age of 13 to work as an underage illegal worker in factories.
In 2009, she got married and had three children.
Throughout those years, Yang Niuhua still remembered her hometown and her original name. She recalled: "I remember my original name as Niuhua because in my dream, I heard my mother constantly calling me ' Niuhua, Niuhua'".
In April 2021, Yang Niuhua contacted his biological sister through social network Douyin. When she reunited with her family in her hometown, she painfully realized that both her father and mother had passed away at the age of 30, just a few years after she was kidnapped. They spent a year searching for her inexcusably, leading to tragic consequences: her father turned to alcohol and her mother suffered from mental problems.
"I imagined some situations where why my parents couldn't find me. For example, I guessed they were divorced, or they had a son later. However, I didn't expect that they would die of depression from losing me," Yang Niuhua shared in grief.
Determined to seek justice for himself and his family, Yang Niuhua spent months searching for evidence and convincing witnesses. Her efforts contributed significantly to bringing Yu to court. In the first trial in September last year, Yu was sentenced to death.
When the verdict was announced, Yang Niuhua felt relieved because "everyone knew Yu was a bad person". Her story is not only a testament to human resilience in the face of adversity, but also a warning about the long-term and tragic impact of human trafficking on victims and their families.
