The journey home of a girl who was tricked and sold to China
(Baonghean.vn) - After many unsuccessful attempts to contact and escape from China, LTH texted and called on Zalo to ask for help, hoping to return to Vietnam. Through H's messages, Mr. Hung learned of H's hometown and family address, and proactively texted and contacted the Quy Hop Police Department via Facebook, asking them to coordinate with the authorities to find a way to bring H back to his hometown.
Rescuing a girl who was tricked and sold to China by her mother-in-law and sister-in-law
(Baonghean.vn) - H. (from Quy Hop, Nghe An) was lured by a woman named Duyet (mother-in-law's sister-in-law) and sold to China as a wife for 95,000 NDT.
These days, the one-room house of mother and daughter H is bustling with laughter. People from all over the village come and go to congratulate LTH (23 years old) in Tham village, Chau Ly commune (Quy Hop) on returning home after more than a year of being tricked and sold to Ha Bac - China.
Tricked and sold to China by her husband's family
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| After a month of being sold to China, H did not know that her biological father had passed away. Photo: Phan Giang |
According to the victim's statement: Around October 2016, while she was at her husband's house in Xet village, Ms. Duyet (mother-in-law's sister-in-law) and Mr. Truong (Ms. Duyet's son) came to visit and asked Ms. Vi Thi Que (H's mother-in-law) to find someone for Ms. Duyet to send to China to work. If they found someone, they would pay them.
Ms. Duyet told H that going to China to sell groceries would pay a high salary of 6 million Vietnamese Dong per month. At that time, H's father had cancer, so to have money to treat his father, H agreed to go to China.
About 10 days later, Duyet's son went to Quy Hop to pick up H and take her to Hanoi, to Mong Cai (Quang Ninh) and then called his sister, Sau, to pick H up. Sau sent someone to take H to China by illegal means. H told Sau that she wanted to work to earn money to send back to her family to treat her father's illness, but Sau said that if she went to China, she had to get married. If H refused, Sau threatened that if she did not get married, he would sell her to a brothel. At that time, H had to agree to Sau's arrangement.
Sau sold H to a Chinese man named Li Rue Xe for 95,000 yuan (equivalent to about 300 million Vietnamese Dong) but did not give H a single penny.
Humiliation in a foreign land
Due to language barriers and being controlled by her husband's family, her days as an "illegal" daughter-in-law in a foreign land were humiliating and bitter.
In the first days, H. was extremely panicked, trying to find ways to refuse her husband. But the more she resisted, the more he locked her in the house, not allowing her to go out and interact with people, indifferent and cold. H was afraid day and night, if this continued, she would not have a chance to return home, and would just become a ghost in a foreign land. Not accepting this, H changed her thoughts and actions, preparing for an escape.
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| House H has nothing valuable. Photo: Phan Giang |
During her time living in a foreign country, she could not contact her relatives and did not know anything about them. Back home, a month after she was sold to China, her father passed away from a terrible liver cancer.
Wiping away her tears, H said: “In the following days, I did not try to refuse my husband, so I was no longer locked in the house. Every day, I followed my husband's family to work on the farm. They did not understand what I said and did not understand what I was saying. I only knew how to work like a horse or a buffalo.
At first, my husband didn't let me go anywhere because he was afraid I would run away. But later, when I was obedient and didn't refuse, my husband believed me. Moreover, seeing me working hard and no longer showing any desire to return home, my husband's family no longer controlled me so much and bought me a phone to use."
In tears, H choked up and said: “I was lucky to have a kind husband's family, I was not beaten, I only had to be the wife of Li Rue Xe. But there, there were many terrible things, near where I lived, many Vietnamese women were sold to be wives but they were the common wives of 3-4 brothers in one family, and they were often beaten. Luckily, I didn't have children with my husband in China, otherwise if I had children I wouldn't have been able to leave, and many women who had children and wanted to return home were held by their husbands' families as collateral.”
After more than a year of being sold to China, H thought of escaping at all costs. Then, someone gave H the phone number of lawyer Nguyen Dinh Thai Hung (a lawyer working in Ho Chi Minh City) and H received a response from Vietnam. After nearly a month of asking for help, H was successfully rescued by Vietnamese authorities and the Blue Dragon Children's Organization while she was living with Mr. Li Rue Xe's family in Hebei Province - China, who brought her back to Vietnam safely.
Happy reunion
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| H was rescued by authorities and handed over to his family. Photo: Phan Giang |
