Two Vietnamese jailed for trafficking 16 women to work as sex slaves
Date Posted: 2/21/2006

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced two women to prison for smuggling 16 women to Malaysia and other countries in the region and forcing them to work as prostitutes, state-controlled media reported Tuesday.

Nguyen Thi My Nga and Nguyen Thi Thuy Dung were given 12 years and six years in prison respectively at the one-day trial Monday, the Nong Nghiep newspaper said.

They were convicted of smuggling the women to Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia between June 2002 until January 2003, when the case was uncovered after women informed their families in Vietnam, the newspaper said.

The women were originally promised work as waitresses at restaurants with a monthly salary of US$800 to US$1,000 in Malaysia, but they were forced to work in brothels instead, it said. The newspaper said the brothel operators confiscated all the money paid by clients to the women, who got between US$47 to US$145 a visit.

Court officials were not available for comment Tuesday. It's unclear whether the women have returned to Vietnam.

Thousands of women and children have been sold to China, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries to work in the sex industry or forced into marriage, according to government figures.-AP