Kidnapped Children at Helsinki Airport — The Human Trafficking Network China and Finland are Desperate to Hide
Why are China and Finland working together to try to permanently silence an American journalist?
Because they desperately want to bury the Truth about the child trafficking network moving through the Helsinki (HEL) Airport's rental car parking garage.
"Child abductions are a big problem in China," the BBC reports.
"Finland is mainly a country of transit and [a] destination for victims of sex trafficking and forced labor," writes Sari Latomaa in the Intercultural Human Rights Law Review.
What better place to traffic kidnapped children than via strategic blind spots in your tiny country's international airport?
I. THE AIRPORT ROBBERY
‘HEL Airport's rental car parking garage is fairly modern. So why…'
I wondered, after I was robbed by professional thieves inside that garage the very day I arrived in Finland in October 2024.
‘...is there a glaring absence of security cameras inside the belly of this garage; where the rental cars are parked?’
Not just a glaring absence, but a deliberate one.
Per interviews with employees working at rental car companies operating inside that garage, numerous requests had been made to install security cameras in the main parking area.
All of those requests were ignored or denied.
"We have asked multiple times for permission to install security cameras in our section, and every time we're told it's not possible," said one rental car employee, on condition of anonymity.
There is a bevy of cameras inside HEL Airport and along its exterior roads and walkways.
But not in the belly of that rental car parking garage, which has a secret rear exit where cars can come and go unnoticed.
There is also a national police station at HEL Airport, just a short walk from the parking garage. There is heavy police officer presence in that station, which I witnessed in person.
Yet, that did not deter professional thieves from driving away with my luggage, in broad daylight, from that parking garage with no inner cameras.
‘How could they be so brazen? So bold?’
Well, because they knew they would be shielded and protected by HEL's airport police force.
Which is exactly what happened in October 2024. Days later, when the thieves returned to the garage to flee the country, I caught them red-handed with my stolen items. Then, as they tried to scurry into the airport for their international flight, I had them detained by private security forces until the police arrived.
I and other witnesses were shocked and horrified when HEL's police officers moved swiftly and decisively to free the criminals and help them escape.
All while Officer Timo Luoto and his police squad tried to scare and intimidate me, the victim.
After the robbery, I spent many long hours in that parking garage, by day and in the near-freezing darkness of night.
At no point did I ever see a single patrol car, or police officer, or security guard patrolling the area.
Not a single one.
Moreover, every time I asked the airport police to check airport security footage of the professional thieves' movements into and out of that garage...
All of my verbal and written requests were ignored or denied.
A rental car parking garage... at Finland's sole international airport... with no inner cameras allowed... and no security guards or police officers on patrol... where professional thieves feel no fear... because they know they will be shielded and protected by Finland's national police department at the highest levels.
Suffice it to say, my journalistic alarm bells knew there was something rotten afoot in Finland.
Something far more rotten, sinister and evil than petty thievery.
II. THE SUPO ASSASSINS
A year and a half later, on May 8, 2026, covert operatives for SUPO, Finland's CIA, tried to assassinate me in Phuket, Thailand and make it look like a motorbike traffic accident.
SUPO is overseen by Mari Rantanen, Finland's Minister of the Interior. Her boss is Petteri Orpo, Finland's prime minister.
Mari is a career cop who, in her current role, is also Finland's top cop. She oversees Finland's police force nationwide, including the corrupt officers protecting criminals operating freely at HEL Airport.
Alarmingly, Mari's ex-husband, Mika, was killed in a "traffic accident" in 2022.
On April 13, 2026, I Bcc'd Mari's personal secretary, Jaana Soderman, on an email I sent to Juha Tuovinen, Finland's national police chief who reports directly to Mari.
In the email, I followed up — yet again — on my repeated requests for an independent investigation into the police corruption, collusion and threats I had witnessed and endured at HEL Airport.
Juha Tuovinen never replied to my email. Instead, per my investigation and my official sources in Finland…
Mari Rantanen gave SUPO chief, Juha Martelius, the kill order to end my life in Thailand.
And to make it look like a motorbike "traffic accident.”
III. THE CHINESE SPIES
Mari, her Juhas, and her SUPO henchmen did not act alone, however.
They were aided and abetted by Chinese operatives who had been surveilling me for months, from one country to the next, throughout Asia.
Days before SUPO's assassination attempt, a Chinese operative named, "Jen," checked into the same hotel I was staying at; on the same floor I was staying on; right next to the elevator.
Jen magically appeared at the elevator the exact moment I emerged from my room to pick up a Grab food order.
She was visibly pregnant and told me she was an American from Las Vegas studying Chinese in Shanghai. When I asked her what her baby's father, who also lived in Shanghai, did for a living...
Her mind went blank. As she struggled to come up with an answer on the fly.
I had only been in that hotel a few days before Jen's suspicious appearance. During our conversation, I was fully aware she was a Chinese operative — as I had had plenty of unsolicited experiences with them for months.
In that moment, however, I did not know what Jen's intentions were.
Two days later, on May 8, when SUPO carried out its failed assassination attempt on my life, Jen was checked out and long gone.
(I have since confirmed via my sources that Jen is, indeed, a Chinese operative.)
In the days after SUPO's failed assassination, when I started publishing evidence of their homicidal actions — paid for with public tax dollars — covert operatives were lurking in a car across from my Phuket hotel, actively trying to hack into my computer devices.
They did so on two separate days before I filed a report with the Thai government and flew out of Thailand.
Days later, I was on a night train in South Korea when an older Asian man suddenly appeared and said he had a ticket for the seat right next to mine.
Even though the train car was half empty, he was rather insistent on sitting there. Luckily, my luggage was in the way.
The night train was fully booked when it left Seoul Station, and we were already hours into the journey. The woman who had been sitting in the seat next to me had already departed. So the chance of this random man having the seat right next to mine was slim to none.
The timing of his sudden appearance, however, was even more suspect. Not only did he appear long after the train had left the previous station...
He also appeared mere moments after I started posting content related to my Finland investigation on my social media channels.
Right before he appeared, my phone started acting up again. The same way it did in my hotel room in Thailand, when shadowed operatives lurked nearby.
When I asked to see the man's ticket, he demurred.
Instead, he sat in the empty seat directly across the aisle from me, made a quick phone call, then closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep.
On high alert, I tracked down the train conductor and asked her to check the man's train ticket.
Just as I suspected, his registered seat was nowhere near mine. It was in a completely different car.
As the conductor escorted him to his designated seat, the moment he left my train car, my phone's functionality went back to normal.
Soon thereafter, the train pulled into the next station. And like a spy in a Hollywood whodunnit whose cover has been blown, the man stealthed off of the train.
Never to be seen again.
IV. THE DESPERATION
"Reporters get legal threats... [and] honeypots sent after them, and blackmail efforts, and fake sources using false identities," says Ronan Farrow, an investigative reporter for The New Yorker.
"There is a whole underworld... of illicit tactics used to shut down reporters."
When I majored in journalism in college, where I took courses on reporting and libel and ethics, never did I ever imagine that government agencies would work together to try to murder me one day.
Or that they would invest exorbitant resources and public tax dollars to spy on me from one country to the next, for months on end.
At this point, I have had enough unsolicited experiences with Chinese operatives — who come in a variety of ethnicities, ages and sizes — to easily spot one in the wild.
It was not only alarming, but also insightful, that that operative on the train and his comrades:
1. Followed me from Thailand to South Korea after SUPO'S failed assassination.
2. Days later, they stalked me for hours at Seoul Station where — after I managed to purchase a newly cancelled ticket on one of the busiest travel days of the year, wherein all of the outgoing trains were fully booked — I had to wait nearly 8 hours to board my night train.
3. They actively tried to hack into my phone on the train, mere moments after I started posting content related to my Finland investigation on social media.
Their actions further illuminated the extent to which Finland and Chinese operatives are working together to try to silence my voice as a journalist; and the honest, integrous beating of my heart.
But why was China involved in any of this?
I had no beef with China. I had never reported on corruption in China. And though I had visited China once in the past as a tourist, it was a long, long time ago.
So why, pray tell, does China have a beef with me?
Why has China invested exorbitant resources to have its operatives track, follow and surveil me, an American journalist, from one country to the next, for months on end?
Well, as it turns out, all of these covert and homicidal roads lead back to HELL.
To that rental car parking garage with no police patrols... no security guards... a hidden rear exit... and no inner cameras allowed.
V. THE MISSING CHINESE CHILDREN
Baby where are you?
I lost you that day…
I will spend my whole life
trying to find you.
This is the mournful song of Xiao Chaohua, a Chinese father who says his 5-year-old son was kidnapped on Valentine's Day in 2007.
Xiao's heartbreaking story is just one of millions, in a tear-drenched ocean of Chinese parents whose children have disappeared without a trace.
"The pain the traffickers have caused me is unspeakable," says Luo Xingzhen, a mother whose son and daughter were abducted in 1996.
"There is a huge problem with kidnapping in China," says Winston Sterzel, host of The China Show.
Winston lived in China for over a decade before an alleged series of political threats, surveillance, and intimidation tactics prompted him to move his young family far and away from China.
"You ask any Chinese parent if they would feel comfortable letting their kid run off out of their sight anywhere in China, and they would tell you, ‘No,’” he says.
"It's horrifying how bad kidnapping is in China."
Years ago, the U.S. state department estimated over 20,000 children were kidnapped in China annually.
Chinese media outlets, on the other hand, estimated that the actual number of child kidnappings was over 200,000 a year.
Both estimates are politically sensitive and strategically downplayed to curb the retaliatory wrath of China's ruling party: the Chinese Communist Party.
"The Chinese government does not want the rest of the world to know that they've got a huge human trafficking and [child] kidnapping problem," Winston says.
Quite frankly, in a country of over 1.4 billion people, with an estimated 8 to 10 million births a year, the number of vanishings nationwide is likely between 500,000 to 1 million Chinese children a year.
Some of these children are sold or abandoned by their own parents. While others are abducted by one parent during child custody battles.
"In China, courts often grant custody to whomever is currently housing the child," CNN reports.
Some children are snatched by traffickers and stolen away to other provinces in China, where they are sold to childless parents; or to families desperate for unpaid labor; grandchildren (via forced marriage); or an "adopted" male heir.
Abducted when he was two-years-old, Guo Xinzhen was trafficked and sold to a family in a different province. A DNA test reunited Guo with his real parents 24 years later.
Devastatingly, other kidnapped children in China have it much, much worse. They are sold domestically into a life of sex work; forced marriages; forced pregnancies; criminal gangs; or slave labor.
Abducted when she was five-years-old, Yang Niuhua was trafficked and sold to an elderly couple 1,243 miles (2,000 km) away from her hometown. Yang says her fake mother was abusive; forced her to drop out of school in the sixth grade; and was grooming her to be a child bride to the couple's deaf son.
In the tragic aftermath, both of Yang's real parents died from grief.
But what about the rest of China's missing children?
What about the countless babies and children who are smuggled out of China?
Far beyond its borders.
Vanished without a trace.
VI. THE CHILD TRAFFICKING TRANSIT HUB IN HEL
Per my investigative research and interviews with official sources...
It shattered my heart when I uncovered the long hidden, despicable Truth that abducted children from China and other Asian countries are being trafficked through HEL, to other destinations in Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
When I was robbed at HEL Airport in October 2024, the journalist in me knew something rotten, sinister and evil was afoot in that rental car parking garage with no inner cameras allowed.
Yet I secretly hoped it did not involve the worst evil imaginable:
Child trafficking, abuse and exploitation.
Finland is a small, rocky, Eastern European country that the global geopolitical community pays little to no attention to.
It has few natural resources. An aged population of only 5 million people. High suicide rates. High government debt. A crumbling economy. And the second highest unemployment rate in Europe.
Its main news organization, Yle, is financed and controlled by the national government. So there is no stalwart Fourth Estate holding public officials accountable.
Geographically, Finland straddles the line between East and West. Between Europe and Asia.
China's westernmost cities are merely 3,000+ miles (5,000+ km) away. Akin to flying 9 hours from Florida to Alaska in America.
Moreover, China is one of Finland's largest trade partners. Nearly 10 percent of its non-illicit imports come from China.
Finland's crumbling economy... neutered press... geographical positioning... and geopolitical obscurity... make it a perfect hub for black market, criminal activities.
"Finland is a well-known transit hub for human trafficking. Including children," says one source, who has close knowledge of this evil underworld.
"What is less publicly known is the way innocent babies, children and adults are being smuggled through Finland's commercial airports and seaports to nefarious actors and destinations."
Where they are forced into sex work; pornography; marriage; pregnancy; slave labor; and other crimes against humanity.
One place that is definitely part of this evil, black market transit network is that rental car parking garage in HEL, where no inner cameras are allowed.
VII. THE EVILDOERS
The more I pressed Mari Rantanen, Juha Tuovinen, and the Orpo administration for an independent investigation into the police corruption and collusion I witnessed and experienced in HEL...
The more I was tracked, followed and surveilled, from one country to the next, for months on end.
Leading up to May 8, 2026, when SUPO Finland agents and Chinese operatives worked together to try to silence my life and my investigative journalism permanently.
Suffice it to say, Mari Rantanen; her boss, Petteri Orpo; and his administration — including the Ministry of Justice, which swiftly denied my formal request in Fall 2025 for an independent investigation into police corruption and collusion; and told me to file a complaint with Mari's Ministry of the Interior instead...
They all have strong personal motives — from financial enrichment; to fear of imprisonment — to desperately want to protect and hide the criminal activities and evil child trafficking taking place in HEL; and at other ports of entry in Finland.
One wonders if Mari, her Juhas, and her SUPO henchman, who hail from a small, forgettable country no one gives two figs about...
Would have been so emboldened to (try to) assassinate an American journalist on foreign soil in Thailand, if they were not aided and abetted by a bigger, richer, nastier paper tiger:
China.
Their evil partner in committing crimes against humanity's beloved and innocent children.
Watch
