ST Feb 5, 2005

SLAIN TWINS
Dad pleads guilty, gets 8 years and cane Murder charge reduced, judge gives 'compassionate' sentence
By Elena Chong
THE father accused of killing his month-old twin babies yesterday pleaded guilty to reduced charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The 27-year-old unemployed man, originally accused of murder, was sentenced to eight years' jail and six strokes of the cane after he admitted hitting the babies on the head with an ashtray on Jan 21 last year.

His change of plea came after a 12-day trial, half of which was spent on a trial-within-a-trial to determine if several of his statements to the police were voluntary.

After it was ruled that they were, his lawyers, Mr R.S. Bajwa and Mr Mahmood Gaznavi, had the case adjourned till yesterday to make representations.

Having considered those representations, Deputy Public Prosecutor Ng Cheng Thiam told the court the prosecution had decided to proceed on reduced charges on 'compassionate grounds'.

DPP Chong Li Min said that while the accused was alone in a room with his twins, he grabbed a helmet-shaped ashtray from a table and hit the younger baby on the head after turning him face down. He then went to the other side of the bed and hit the other twin on the head.

Later, his mother came to the flat with some letters.

After reading a letter about the baby bonus, his wife said she wanted the baby bonus money to be credited to her father's account. The accused did not reply, but returned to the bedroom and later came out carrying the younger twin, who was crying, and handed the child to his mother.

The woman said her grandson was cold, and his head swollen and soft.

The accused's wife then went to the room and found the other baby lying motionless on the bed with his head tilted to the left.

Later that afternoon, paramedics pronounced the babies dead from severe head injuries.

Describing it as a very tragic case, Mr Bajwa said his client loved the babies very much and often got up in the early hours to feed and comfort them.

The lawyer said his client had committed the crime on the spur of the moment, having been disturbed at the recollection of 'not very nice' things his aunts had said about him.

The accused's 25-year-old wife - who was with her son and other family members in court - had forgiven and still loved him despite what had happened, the lawyer said. The family cannot be named in order to protect the other child, who will be three this year.

Mr Bajwa said his client even 'patted' his twins to sleep after hitting them, thinking nothing serious had happened.

In passing sentence, Justice Tay Yong Kwang said: 'You know what you have done. It is not an easy case for me to sentence.'

He told the accused - who appeared impassive - that 'by a measure of compassion' for him, he would make the sentence of eight years and three strokes on each charge concurrent, not consecutive. He also backdated the sentence to Jan 28 last year .

The maximum penalty for culpable homicide not amounting to murder is life imprisonment or a jail term of up to 10 years, or a fine and caning as well.

ST Feb 5, 2005

CASE OF FATHER BEHEADING TEEN
Man surrenders but girl's head still missing

HONG KONG - A 66-YEAR-OLD man who went missing after allegedly beheading his daughter with an axe following a heated quarrel, surrendered to police yesterday, it was reported.

Li Chi Pang showed up at a police station yesterday morning and was being questioned, according to a police spokesman.

Police said that they were still searching for the 16-year-old girl's head which, some newspaper reports said, had been taken away by the father.

According to Hong Kong newspapers, Li had intended to dismember the body in a bid to destroy evidence.

The girl was naked and had a long and deep cut on her thigh, Ming Pao Daily News reported.

Li also attacked his 20-year-old son with an axe when he returned to the family flat a few hours after the grisly murder of his sister. The attack left the young man with slash wounds to his forehead, the back of his head and his left hand.

The motive for the attacks was still unclear, police said.

According to Ming Pao, the girl's mother, who went to identify the body on Thursday, said that her daughter had a poor relationship with her unemployed father, who was physically abusive.

Mrs Li, dressed in a red jacket and looking calm, told reporters that her husband often beat the girl. Since young, she had frequently been smacked on the head by her father and she grew up hating him, the mother added.

The family lived on the HK$4,000 (S$850) Mrs Li brought home every month as an odd-job worker.

She said though Li was not a compulsive gambler, he often used whatever little spare money there was to bet on horse races and the lottery. But he did not drink and quit smoking a few years back, she said, adding that he would do the housework and cook for the family.

According to some reports, the father often scolded his daughter for being lazy and refusing to look for a job.

He apparently turned violent on Wednesday after his daughter refused to give him money, reports said.

Li reportedly fled with the HK$2,000 to HK$3,000 that he had snatched from his son after attacking him.

The case shocked neighbours in the Shun Lee Estate, who described the family as friendly.

Criminologist Dennis Wong believed the father committed the crime in a fit of anger. He could have resorted to violence because his daughter's hatred for him hurt his pride badly, he said.

'I do not think the murderer is a mental patient. He just did it on impulse.

'He will probably blame himself for the tragedy he created once he calms down.'

ST Feb 5, 2005

Bus passenger saves 5 babies from traffickers
Surprised to see newborns on long trip, woman gets friend to call cops

BEIJING - AN ALERT bus passenger rescued five newborns from baby traffickers by sending SMSes to a colleague, urging him to call the police.

The woman, identified only as Ms Yang, had found it suspicious that a group of fellow passengers had taken along five babies, all looking no older than two months, for the long bus journey.

And coincidentally, all were wrapped in similar blankets.

Thanks to her quick thinking, the bus was stopped by police officers at a toll station along its route, and the five infants - three girls and two boys - were saved from the baby smugglers, the
Beijing Youth Daily reported yesterday.

The bus was travelling from Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia, to Linyi city in east China's Shandong province on Wednesday.

The babies' umbilical cords were still attached, which showed that they were less than a week old, the report said.

Around the time that the arrests were made, news broke that the Chinese police had cracked another case of baby trafficking in southern China which involved a 104-member syndicate.

The gang operated out of Putian city in south-east China's Fujian province and had purchased or sold 70 babies in six provinces and neighbouring Myanmar in the past decade, the Beijing News said. Seven of the babies were from Myanmar.

In an indication of how common and organised the black market trade in babies has become, the culprits in this case were mostly village women, including midwives and matchmakers who saw the opportunity to make money and seized it.

Some were in charge of working with hospital staff to purchase unwanted newborns, while others were in charge of transporting and feeding the babies and making contact with cohorts in other provinces.

The women, often working with their relatives and friends, used their connections with government departments to produce fake identification cards for the babies.

Police said the network had sold more than 70 newborns, of whom 44 have now been recovered.

Twenty-nine of them have been matched with their real parents, reported BBC News.

To avoid raising suspicions, breast-feeding women were recruited and the babies were given a little time to become familiar with the women before they were transported on buses.

China's one-child policy, which makes it illegal for couples to have more than one child, has led to the abandonment of female infants. This has resulted in a lopsided ratio of boys to girls that experts predict could, in the decades to come, leave tens of millions of men without wives.

The shortage has prompted some parents to acquire future brides for their sons and infants are cheaper to buy than a teenage bride.

In 2003, police uncovered the country's biggest baby-trafficking case in the southern region of Guangxi, bordering Yunnan, when 28 newborn girls were found in nylon bags on a bus with their arms and legs tied. One of the babies later died.

More than 60 syndicate members, convicted of selling at least 200 babies in the same case, have either been executed or otherwise punished. -- AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE REUTERS

ST Feb 6, 2005

US couple accused of torturing adopted kids

INVERNESS (FLORIDA) - A FUGITIVE couple accused of starving and torturing five adopted children - including pulling out their toenails with pliers - were captured in south-eastern Utah after police tracked them through their cellphones, officials said.

John and Linda Dollar were jailed on Friday in San Juan County, Utah, on Florida warrants of felony aggravated child abuse.

The family included seven adopted children between the ages of 12 and 17. Five of them said they were tortured, subjected to electric shocks and beatings with hammers and had their toenails yanked out with pliers.

The abused five had physical injuries to back up their claims and were severely malnourished.

'They looked like the photos that we've seen of Auschwitz,' said a sheriff's office spokesman, describing 14-year-old twins, one weighing 16kg, the other 17kg - about 35kg below normal.

They told of being forced to sleep in a closet with a chime that sounded if they opened the door because the couple accused them of stealing food and misbehaving.

The other two children were favoured by the Dollars and unhurt. All are in state custody.

John Dollar, 58, is a real estate appraiser and his 51-year-old wife taught the children at home.

Doctors alerted investigators two weeks ago when the couple's 16-year-old boy, who weighed just 27kg, was treated for head and neck injuries. \-- AP

ST Feb 7, 2005
Immunisation key to saving poorest children
By Yoweri Museveni and Jens Stoltenberg

AS NATIONAL leaders - one in Scandinavia, the other in East Africa - we awaken each day to dramatically different realities. Consider, for example that a newborn in Uganda cannot hope to live much beyond the age of 46, compared to a life expectancy in Norway of 79 years.

In Africa, the struggle to survive starts early. For every 1,000 children born, more than 170 die before they turn five, often for want of vaccines that could easily have saved their lives. In contrast, in 2002, Norway lost four children under the age of five per 1,000 born.

There are significant and seemingly intractable economic and environmental reasons for this gap, but there is also great promise. With the proper investments and political will on the part of national and international leaders, immunisation can save the lives of millions of children in the poorest regions of the world. Among the most important and cost-effective public health tools ever invented, vaccines should be seen as a cornerstone of international development.

Yet in 2003, more than 27 million children - most of them among the world's poorest - missed out on key vaccines during their first year of life. It is unacceptable that, also in 2003, almost 1.5 million children died from diseases for which vaccines are available and routinely administered to children in wealthier countries.

Governments of both rich countries and poor have boosted the amount of money they give for vaccines. The United Kingdom, for example, just last week promised as much as US$1.8 billion (S$3 billion) over the next 15 years, if its innovative financing plan is approved and other nations agree to participate. Such generosity must become the norm, as much more support will be required to cover the long-term commitment that vaccine programmes need.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported recently that the world is far from meeting the internationally-agreed Millennium Development Goal of reducing childhood mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Given current trends, the UN agencies say that the immunisation coverage rates needed to achieve this goal will not be met until 2037.

A major infusion of resources is required to reverse decades of under-investment in health service delivery systems and to support countries in crisis. The WHO estimates that an additional US$12 billion is needed over the next decade to provide vaccines against yellow fever and hepatitis B, and strengthen routine immunisation coverage in the poorest countries.

We have a proven solution for how such resources can be used efficiently and effectively, as demonstrated by a ground-breaking new global immunisation initiative, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI).

The GAVI alliance and its financing arm, The Vaccine Fund, bring together under one umbrella a unique group - national governments from industrialised and developing countries, Unicef, the WHO, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the vaccine industry, public health institutions and NGOs.

Their common goals are to increase access to essential vaccines among children in poor countries, to improve injection safety, and to accelerate the development and introduction of new vaccines for diseases such as rotavirus and pneumococcal pneumonia, which together accounted for more than two million deaths in 2002.

By the end of 2003, GAVI support for immunisation in low-income countries had averted an estimated 670,000 premature deaths among children born from 2001 to 2003. Hepatitis B vaccines are now being funded in 50 of the more than 70 countries that GAVI supports.

Uganda and Norway have played an integral part in GAVI's initial success. Norway, which has already provided more than US$100 million to GAVI, has announced that it will give almostUS$300 million more through 2010 and Uganda has committed its resources to dramatically increasing the immunisation rate among Uganda's children.

The achievements of GAVI and its partners were recognised most recently with last week's announcement of a second US$750-million grant over 10 years from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Nine countries and the European Union have also contributed significant resources to this alliance. However, increased resources and political will are still needed.

What will it take to create a world in which a child's chances of living past the age of five will not depend so strongly on which country he or she calls home? The answer is more money, a commitment on the part of rich countries and poor alike to place vaccines high on their public health agendas, and a proven system, like that of GAVI, for channelling new funds to the people who are most in need.

Yoweri Museveni is President of Uganda and Jens Stoltenberg leads the Norwegian Labour Party and is a former prime minister of Norway. He is also a board member of The Vaccine Fund.

children.....innocence......i followed e 1st story quite closely.....was really wondering who e murder was.....as it turned out, e dad......wat went wrong???? e 2nd 1......so grisly.....3rd 1, pple r selling babies away while others r killing them......haizzzzz in barely 3 days o news, so much things on abuse & neglect o children.....these r only e bare few which i've posted.....haizzzz....wat is tis world coming 2......