Vietnam police rescue 6 trafficked Cambodian women en route to China

Two Vietnamese women were detained in a bride trafficking ring on Sunday after police saved six Cambodian victims who were departing for China at Tan Son Nhat Airport in Saigon.

Initial investigation found Ngo Thi Van, 42, and Ngo Thi Gai, 44, had approached women from poor families in Cambodia and convinced them into leaving home with the promise of a better life in China.

They paid a man VND10 million ($437) for every woman he could smuggle across the Vietnam-Cambodia border. They would then fly the victims from Saigon to Hanoi before transporting them to China and sell them to men seeking for wives there.

Gai said they paid the victims’ families $500-1,000 each. By the time of the arrest, the duo have smuggled six women to China. The rescued victims were between 17 and 32 years of age.

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.

China’s gender imbalance, the product of the one-child policy and illicit abortion of female foetuses due to a traditional preference for male heirs, has created a huge surplus of single men, Reuters reported.

Women from Southeast Asia, particularly from Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar are being sold to these men as wives, or just to bear children or work as prostitutes in the world's most populous country.