Two Vietnamese sold as brides to China return home
Two young Vietnamese sold as brides to China have been rescued and returned home last week, South China Morning Post reported.
They had been sold to poor men in the coastal province of Shandong months ago before they were rescued by police and sent to Guangxi last week in order to be escorted back to Vietnam, the newspaper cited a state media report in China as saying.
One of them, 17, was abducted in November while attending a high school activity in Hoa Binh Province neighboring Hanoi, the report said.
A few days later, her father received a phone call from a man telling him to stop looking for his daughter and that she had been taken to China for sale.
Police in Vietnam then arrested a Vietnamese suspect and asked for help from their counterparts in China's Guangxi Province for help.
The schoolgirl was rescued in January. The other woman, 21, was rescued in March.
Many men in rural China have been paying traffickers for a foreign wife as they are either too poor or old to find one at home.
Vietnamese victims of human trafficking rose nearly 13% to 1,128 in 2016, according to official data.
They were sold to men seeking wives in China, Malaysia and South Korea, or just to bear children or work as prostitutes in these countries. Police only managed to rescue around half of them.