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Hoang Thi Mai Huong, 35, was arrested after Son La police determined that she's part of a human trafficking ring responsible for trafficking women from the province's Moc Chau District to China, police said on Saturday.
Investigation found Huong went to work as a hired hand in China in 2017. She met and conspired with some Chinese nationals to establish the human trafficking ring, in which she would trick Vietnamese women into traveling to China then help sell them as brides or into prostitution.
Upon returning to Son La, Huong became acquainted with a local 27-year-old woman and promised to help her get an easy job that paid well in China. After earning the woman's trust, Huong brought her to China and sold her to a Chinese man to be his wife for VND4.5 million ($194,700) last October.
Vietnamese authorities cooperated with the victim's family to rescue her and bring her back to Vietnam earlier this month. Details of the mission were not revealed.
Data from Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security shows that between 2010 and the third quarter of last year, Vietnam recorded over 3,000 human trafficking cases, in which 4,500 traffickers traded almost 7,000 victims, mostly women and children in poor and rural areas.
A majority of them were sold to men seeking wives in China, Malaysia and South Korea, or just to bear children or forced into prostitution. Besides financial difficulties of the victims, police officers have said that negligence, easy immigration procedures and gender imbalance in destination countries are responsible for the surge in human trafficking.
Vietnam is working with other countries to bring home 385 human trafficking victims who remain abroad, Minister of Public Security To Lam said at a meeting this month.
China rescued more than 1,100 women trafficked into the country, many of them sold as brides, in a joint operation with Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam between July and December 2018, Chinese police said in a statement on Friday.
