Three people sentenced in Vietnam for trafficking women to China
HANOI - Three people in southern Vietnam have been sentenced to up to 17 years in jail for trafficking women to neighboring China, a provincial judge said Thursday.
Nguyen Thi Bach Tuyet, 33, was sentenced to 17 years in prison while a male associate got five years.
Another woman, Nguyen Thi Tra, 44, who was one of Tuyet's original victims but then helped traffic other women to win her own freedom, got four years in jail at the one-day trial Tuesday in Ba Ria Vung Tau province, presiding judge Nguyen Van Hien said.
From March to December last year, Tuyet lured 19 women, aged 15-30 years old, to China by promising jobs there, but instead sold them to a brothel, Hien said. She made 45 million dong (US$3,000) profit until the case was uncovered last December after one of her victims went to the police, he said.
Tra, from southern Tien Giang province, and her 22-year-old daughter were among the 19 original victims. The brothel owners in China told Tra that they would free her and her daughter if she brought back more women from Vietnam.
Tra came back to China with two women she lured from southern Vietnam, but the Chinese pimps still refused to release her daughter. Tra returned to Vietnam and reported the case to police last December, Hien said.
Tra's daughter and the two women she had brought to China were later returned to Vietnam by Chinese police.
The fate of the other women was not known, he said.
The three convicted have 15 days to appeal their sentences.
In recent years, thousands of Vietnamese women have been sold in China as wives or to work as sex workers.
The Associated Press - December 19, 2002
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