Chained to a lamp post, the terrified Chinese boy whose poverty-stricken father tried to sell him on the street

Chained to a lamp post, the terrified Chinese boy whose poverty-stricken father tried to sell him on the street

Chained to a lamppost, the terrified boy looks around for help. But the adults nearby just stand around talking. And even his father will not come to the rescue - because it was him who chained up the eight-year-old.

Slave auction: Fai, 8, pictured chained to a lamp post by his father Yong Tsui, who tried to sell him to strangers in China

Anger: Onlookers became outraged at the auction and began to attack Yong Tsui, centre, who was caught in a head lock by another man

Yong Tsui put up a small table with a sign on it giving his son's age, name, and his capacity for hard work. He took bids from strangers to take the boy off his hands.

But when interested parties began to ask how easy it would be to feed him, passers-by decided enough was enough.

They called on Yong Tsui to stop the sale in Wuhan, central China.
Police - who have taken the boy, Yong Fai, into care - say his father told them the boy's mother had died three years ago and he could no longer afford to raise him.

Chained: Young Tsui said he had read the tale of two-year-old Chen Jingdan was padlocked to a tree while his rickshaw driver father touted for customers in Beijing. After the picture was published a nursery boss offered the boy free childcare

'He has no job, no home and no money. He says he wasn't interested in the money, just finding a home for the boy,' said one officer.

Yong Tsui said he had read earlier this year how Cheng Jingdan, aged two, had been offered day care after being kept in chains while his father worked as a rickshaw driver and his handicapped mother scavenged through rubbish.

Jingdan has since become a pupil at a nursery in the Chinese capital Beijing thanks to the generosity of those who read about his plight.

The youngster was locked up in the street to keep him safe after his older sister Jinhong was snatched by kidnappers while playing with friends.

His parents said they had no other choice as they were unable to afford child care.

Just last week police in the same city of Wuhan freed two naked teenage girls who had been kept chained in a basement for almost a year.

They were rescued after a repairman found a note they had managed to smuggle out in a broken television.

'Help! I have been held in an underground place for more than a year,' the note read.

The girls, aged 16 and 19, included a sketch of their prison and the telephone number of one of their fathers.

The suspected captor, 39-year-old Zeng Xiangbao, had been in custody for a week in an unrelated rape case, the BBC said. ( dailymail.co.uk )

PLIGHT OF THE POOR: CHILD ABDUCTION IN CHINA

• Child abduction is rife in China where the victims frequently end up in forced labour or the vice industry.

• The gap between rich and poor is growing in China and unscrupulous criminals go to extraordinary lengths to illicit money by kidnapping children and demanding a ransom from anguished parents.

• Children are also sold as slave labour.

• And despite outrage of the 2007 brick kiln slave scandal, which saw 500 children and mentally handicapped adults kidnapped and sold into slavery, such evil trades continue in China.

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