Chinese woman ‘caught smuggling baby onto flight at Bangkok airport’

A Chinese woman was arrested after she was allegedly caught smuggling a baby at an airport in Bangkok.

Fan Fang, 49, was detained while carrying the fake birth certificate of an 11-month-old baby while she attempted to board a flight from Suvarnabhumi Airport in Thailand to Chengdu, China on May 5.

Immigration police found that the document claiming she was the mother of the child was falsified and the baby’s real mother was a Thai woman named Ussanee Khiaokham.

The tourist was detained at the immigration facility in the airport while police are investigating whether she had committed an illegal surrogacy arrangement.

Police Major General Weerapol Charoensiri commander of the Immigration Division 2 department said the campaign against illegal international surrogacy had been stepped up after foreigners, mostly from mainland China, were reported to have taken more than 500 locally born babies out of the country.

He said: ‘The search for illegal international surrogacy has been intensified.

More than 500 locally born babies were taken out of the country by foreigners who were mostly mainland Chinese.

‘The cases mostly involved foreign men who married Thai women as proven by marriage certificates.

They were trying to take the babies out of the country.’ After the reported incidents, the Immigration Division commanded added that they had become more careful when issuing travel documents for infants with suspicious backgrounds.

He said: ‘We caught the woman through these strict procedures and we are now trying to locate other possible accomplices.’ The woman will still be detained at the facility during the investigation.

However, she was defiant that she was the mother of the baby and claimed that the father had already left the country prior to her flight.