On Friday, the Ministry of Public Security said that since January it had been carrying out an operation to solve child abduction and trafficking cases that had occurred over the past four decades, as well as searching for the abducted children and sending them home.

It is not only the parents who suffer when their children are abducted, the abducted children themselves suffer psychological torment. Even if the abducted children are found and returned to their families, the damage done to them might be irreparable. Abducting and trafficking children is a serious crime and there has long been a public outcry to severely punish all child traffickers.

The ministry is conducting a thorough investigation of every case with the aim of returning all the abducted children to their families and punishing the abductors.

The key to solving such cases lies in identifying the interest chains behind them. It is necessary to strike every point in the child trafficking chain, from those who abduct the children, to those who "transport" them to another place and those who "sell" them, as well as those who "buy" them and any who torment them.

None in this chain should escape. Only by punishing them all can others be deterred.

On the same day as the ministry announced the operation called "Reunion", five suspects faced their second trial in Guangzhou city, South China's Guangdong province, for the trafficking of nine children. In their first trial, two were sentenced to death, two were sentenced to life imprisonment, while one was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The only regret is that a woman nicknamed "Auntie Mei", reported to be the gang's ringleader, has still not been apprehended.

The police ought to work harder to find "Auntie Mei" as well as other suspects involved in such crimes, so that children can grow up in a safe environment and families can be free from fear.

But to curb the abduction of children it is also necessary to eliminate the willingness of some to buy them. This requires making buyers who think they are innocent pay the price for their misdeeds.