A man was sentenced to 19 years in jail Wednesday for his involvement in trafficking two women to China in 2005.
Dinh Van Dong, 52, was charged with “human trafficking” and “trafficking of a person under 16,” the Hanoi People’s Court heard.
In 2005, Dong lent Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, 36, a certain amount of money to help her mother pay off a debt. In return, Ha had to coerce two women from Hanoi to sell commodities in China on Dong’s behalf, local media reported.
Visiting Hanoi in May 2005, Ha met a woman named Hang who helped her persuade two anonymous sisters, one aged under 16, to travel to China.
However, both sisters were subsequently sold into prostitution, earning Dong VND3 million ($128), and Ha and Hang VND14 million ($599).
Police opened an investigation after the sisters’ parents reported that they went missing.
They soon arrested Ha, who in February 2006 was sentenced to 17 years in jail on the charges of “human trafficking” and “trafficking of a person under 16.”
Dong managed to stay on the run, until he was arrested in September last year.
Hang’s whereabouts remain unknown. The sisters have not been rescued.
Vietnam is a human trafficking and illegal migration hotspot with annual profits worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
The country has recorded over 3,400 victims of human trafficking since 2013, over 90 percent of them women, children and people from ethnic minority communities, Nguyen Xuan Lap, head of the ministry’s Department of Social Issues Prevention, said at a conference in November last year.
This article originally posted on VNExpress