By Xinhua
Fuzhou : Chinese border police have arrested three human traffickers trying to smuggle 12 teenagers to Canada by declaring them kung fu masters from the Shaolin Temple.
The three traffickers, including two coaches from a martial arts school in Songshan of the central Henan Province – home to the 1,500-year-old temple where kung fu originated and is practiced – charged each teenager between $70,000 and $90,000 to smuggle them out of the country.
The group was stopped at the Huanggang checkpoint, a major entry point into Hong Kong. The 12 bogus performers and the two coaches, named Feng and Chen, were detained by Shenzhen border police and returned to Fujian for interrogation.
The alleged kingpin of the racket, an unemployed man in his 30s from Changle named Huang, was arrested Monday after six weeks on the run.
A spokesman with the border police in Changle said the trafficking had been a deal between the two coaches and Huang. “The Shaolin Temple had nothing to do with it,” an officer told Xinhua in a telephone interview.
Many amateur kung fu practitioners in Henan claim they are Shaolin masters in order to recruit students from other parts of the country.
The Shaolin Temple at Songshan Mountain has drawn foreign dignitaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.