A Vietnam court has sentenced a young man in the Mekong Delta city of Can Tho to seven years in jail for selling a Vietnamese woman to a Chinese brothel for almost US$900.

>> Chinese gets 3 years for selling Vietnamese women to China Pham Nguyen Anh Huy, 21, received the sentence on charges of “trafficking in women” pursuant to Article 119 of the Penal Code, the Can Tho People’s Court said at the trial for him on Friday. The court also ordered that Huy pay VND30 million ($1,405) to H.T.V.T., the 19-year-old victim, as compensation.  According to the indictment, in 2009 Huy and his friend, Nguyen Thanh Hieu, joined a scam to sell Vietnamese women to brothels in China to earn VND8-15 million ($375-702) per case from a human trafficking ring of which Hieu was a member. The two then tried to contact young women and lured them to go to China by lying to them that they would land good jobs in restaurants or hotels there.   In July 2012, Huy asked T., who is his acquaintance, to go to Ho Chi Minh City to look for a job. Huy then introduced the woman to Hieu and suggested all of them take a tour of Mong Cai Town in the northern province of Quang Ninh. On arriving in Mong Cai, the three visited a local woman, Phan Thi Sen, who is another acquaintance of Huy’s, at her house where they also met another woman – Mai. The four people discussed with T. a plan to go to China, where they said they could find her a well-paid job. The group agreed that Sen and Mai took the woman to China first and Huy and Hieu would come later.  As soon as they arrived in China, Mai told T. that the other two men had sold her to a Chinese brothel for VND19 million ($890). Mai and Sen also said if T. refused to work at the brothel designated by Hieu and Huy, she would be sold to another.    For fear of her safety, the young woman could not help but agree to work as a sex worker at that brothel. Meanwhile, T.’s family in Can Tho reported to local police about her missing and provided them with information on the woman’s relations with a number of people, including Huy. Police summoned Huy for questioning but he had fled from his residence, so officers issued a wanted notice. T. later managed to escape from the brothel, return to Vietnam, and report the entire case to police, who then arrested Hieu, Mai, and Sen. At a September 2013 court, Hieu was jailed for 24 years and Sen was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Police were hunting for Huy then.  In April 2014, Huy was detained by police officers in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, for illegally storing drugs. During interrogation, investigators discovered that he was wanted by Can Tho police and thus handed him over to their colleagues. 

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