by Vu Kim Chung
30-3-2000
A court in the northern Vietnamese province of Ninh Binh in March 2000 sentenced 12 people for their roles in selling children for foreign adoption. The leader of the ring, Vu Tien Manh, a senior official in the provincial Justice Department, received the longest term, of four and a half years in jail. The defendants, who included three women, also faced fines totalling 376 million dong ($27,000).
The judge in the trial said the group bought more than 170 new-born babies from unmarried Vietnamese women and desperate families in several northern provinces and then sold them to foreigners. The sales went on for six years, until the ring was uncovered in 1998.
Payments
The judge said many of the children, each sold for between $1,000 and $1,500, were adopted by people from Belgium or France. The gang paid pregnant women between between $200 and $700 for their babies. Adoptive parents were told that the children had been abandoned by their mothers. Nine people were convicted in January 2000 on similar charges of child peddling in the southern province of An Giang, in the country's first trial of this kind.
The French were the main adopters of Vietnamese children until 1999, when Paris stopped the program because of concerns over Vietnamese adoption procedures. In February, France and Vietnam signed a convention on co-operation in adoption matters which, when ratified, will allow legal adoptions to resume.
Penalties meted out
Availing himself of the government’s humanitarian policy, which allows foreigners to adopt Vietnamese children, the corrupt Vu Tien Manh, former justice official of the northern province of Ninh Binh, formed a 12 member ring to smuggle children from other provinces and sell them to overseas clients. He was said to have set up two groups - one to contact foreigners looking to adopt Vietnamese children or adoption agencies and fixing prices; the other who looked for children born out of wedlock or unmarried expectant mothers wanting to give their children away.
At the three-day trial in Ninh Binh province, ending March 30 he was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for his leading role in the racket of selling Vietnamese children to foreigners for adoption, and for embezzling State property. Other three main players of the game including Ngo Nhat; Hoang Van Nam and Ly Thanh Khoa - were sentenced to three, two and a half years and two years in prison respectively for selling the children and another four - Truong Van Son; Dinh Van Quyen; Vu Van Nhuan and Vu Thi Suu-received 18 months in prison each for working as intermediaries. The provincial procuracy reported at trial that between 1992 and 1998, 371 children were permitted to be adopted by foreigners by the provincial People's Committee, 174 of whom were sold by this ring.