Hanoi police are pressing charges against seven people and tracking two others for allegedly buying infants in Vietnam to sell in China. The nine are accused of participation in a trafficking ring uncovered in February last year when police caught four people transporting two babies and a pregnant woman to a northern province bordering China.
One of the babies, a month-old infant, was born by Trinh Thi Nga of Hanoi. The mother of the other infant, a mere two days old at the time, was not identified.
Nguyen Thi Thinh, 43, who was among the four arrested, allegedly trafficked seven infants since the group began operating together in 2007, the police said. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Anh, another ring member, had allegedly smuggled five other babies to China, according to investigators.
The ring has allegedly trafficked a total of 33 babies, raking in hundreds of millions of dong in profits.
They reportedly sold babies to China for adoption for VND20 million (US$1,123) to VND25 million each, online newspaper VietNamNet reported Wednesday.
The four arrestees are facing human trafficking charges, police said. The Hanoi prosecutor’s office is considering ratifying the charges, police said.
Vietnamese police on Tuesday announced the start of their annual two-month campaign to combat human trafficking to places such as China and Cambodia, after about 200 cases were uncovered this year, an AFP report said.
The campaign starts next week and focuses on areas bordering China in the north and Cambodia in the south, the report quoted an official from the Police General Department as saying.
Such campaigns were first instituted in 2004. "Each year, we discover between 200 and 300 cases of trafficking children and women," the official told AFP without providing further details.
National officials are to coordinate with institutions in China, Cambodia and Laos to better combat the problem, said Vietnam News, a government-run English-language daily.
Thousands of Vietnamese women are believed to be trafficked every year especially to China and Cambodia, lured by promises of jobs but then forced to work as prostitutes or to marry.
"Reasons for trafficking were the economic crisis, unemployment and residents' low awareness of the law," Nguyen Tri Phuong, deputy head of the police department for social order offences, was quoted by Vietnam News as saying.
Since 2005 there had been 1,600 cases of human trafficking with 4,300 victims. Since the beginning of this year, 191 trafficking cases involving 417 women and children had been detected.
Source: TN, Agencies
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