Xiamen, Fujian - Micro-bloggers have helped police in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province, catch a couple who have confessed to murdering their 3-year-old daughter and dumping her body in the sea, local police said on Wednesday.

The case is the first publicly reported instance of a murder being solved with the help of Chinese micro-bloggers.

The girl's parents confessed to beating their daughter to death and then dumping the body in the sea off Xiamen, said Lu Zhicheng, spokesman for the public security bureau of Xiamen.

The mother, surnamed Zhao, confessed that she hit the girl with her fist and a coat hanger, and that similar punishment had continued for some time because the girl did not like eating her meals.

According to the police, Zhao and her husband left their hometown in East China's Jiangxi province to live and work in Xiamen. When the girl died, the parents were scared and put the body into a bag and threw it into the sea at midnight on Nov 13. After hearing that the police were trying to capture them, they fled back to Jiangxi.

"The miserable sight of the child infuriated everyone in the police bureau, so we made up our minds to find the murderer by every means," said Ma Cuilin, an officer at the Xiamen police bureau.

However, no progress was made in the first week, so the police had the idea of calling for clues on the official micro blog of Xiamen police - t.sina.com/xmpolice.

At 11 pm on Nov 23, Ma posted some photos of the girl and an entry saying that the body of an unidentified girl in shabby clothes and a woven bag had been found, and that anyone offering valuable clues would be paid 5,000 yuan ($751).

Within three days, the entries and photos had been transmitted to about 10,000 micro-bloggers and had drawn more than 2,000 comments and 100 clues.

Some netizens suggested that police search for clues from the maker of the woven bag and from the clothes the girl had been wearing.

"Several netizens said the clothes were similar to the school uniform at two kindergartens in Xiamen. We checked the kindergartens but found the uniform was a different color to the girl's," said Zeng Lei, an officer with the Xiamen police who was in charge of updating the case information on the micro blog.

On Monday afternoon, one netizen helped police to identify the girl and track down her parents in the neighboring Jiangxi province. The police went to Jinxi county in Jiangxi and caught the suspects at their old home late on Monday night.

"This is the first time Xiamen police have solved a case with the help of micro blogs," said Lu Zhicheng, deputy head of the press department of the Xiamen police.

"We had not expected so many responses from netizens," Lu said, "Apparently micro-blogging has built an excellent platform for us to communicate with people."

He said the police may continue to use micro blogs to solicit clues, but it will not become a common method for police to investigate crimes.

The Xiamen police started its official micro blog on Oct 20, and had 25,542 fans by 5 pm on Thursday. Other security bureaus in places such as Beijing, Zhanjiang city in Guangdong province and Kunming city in Yunnan province have also adopted similar practices.

The 3-year-old girl's tragic story is not the only such case in the country.

In June, a Shaanxi father named Liu Shikui killed his 9-year-old son because the boy did not finish a school assignment, according to local police.

In April in Guangdong province, a father also beat his 9-year-old girl to death because she refused to attend after-school classes.

Jiang Yue, a law professor with Xiamen University, said people guilty of such crimes may be sentenced to death, life imprisonment, or to three to 10 years in jail, depending on the circumstances of the crime.

Kirsten Di Martino, chief of child protection of the China office of the United Nations Children's Fund, said at a meeting on Wednesday that China's rapid social and economic development in the past 30 years has had profound effects on families.

For example, the large number of rural children left behind by their parents who go to the cities to be migrant workers lack proper family care and are more likely to suffer domestic violence, she said.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

China Daily

(China Daily 12/03/2010 page4)