Chinese police rescue 32 Vietnamese women from trafficking ring
Police in China have rescued 32 women trafficked from Vietnam and busted a human trafficking ring after spending more than a year following a suspected victim.
A total of 75 suspects have been arrested, Chinese media cited police from Yunnan in southwest China as saying.
Police from across seven provinces in China started a joint investigation in September 2015 after officers spotted a woman who was unable to speak Chinese traveling with a man who was acting suspiciously.
They discovered that the woman was Vietnamese and had been sold as a bride for US$11,600 to a local man, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Their investigation uncovered a Chinese gang member based in Vietnam working directly with another in China to traffic Vietnamese women. The women were sold across the country through several middlemen.
The Vietnamese government reported nearly a 13% increase in the number of human trafficking victims in 2016, taking the figure to 1,128 for the year.
Police have only managed to rescue around half of them.
They were sold to men seeking wives in China, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea, or just to bear children or work as prostitutes in these countries.
