11 dead in China-Vietnam border road accident linked to human trafficking

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• Almost a dozen people, including nine Vietnamese citizens, were killed when a vehicle overturned along the China-Vietnam border.
• Chinese authorities said the road incident was linked to human smuggling.
• Limited job opportunities in Vietnam have previously prompted citizens to go to China, where some women have been lured into forced marriages and others for the promise of work.

Chinese authorities say 11 people were killed in a road accident Friday along the China-Vietnam border, including nine Vietnamese citizens.

The incident highlights the persistence of human trafficking in the mountainous border region, where there has long been a trade in agricultural goods and workers coming from Vietnam to the relatively poor Chinese province of Guangxi.

One of the other victims was Chinese and the nationality of the other has yet to be determined, according to the social media account of the local Jingxi county government.

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A mountainous border is seen in Meo Vac with Vietnam’s Ha Giang province on the left and China on the right. This region has had a history of trafficking among Vietnamese citizens. (NHAC NGUYEN/AFP via Getty Images)

They were among 14 people aboard an off-road vehicle that overturned and fell into a gully, the government said.

It said the incident was related to human smuggling.

The survivors included the Chinese driver, a Chinese assistant and two Vietnamese citizens, all of whom are being questioned, the government said.

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Limited job opportunities in parts of Vietnam have prompted some of its citizens to seek their fortunes in countries where wages are higher, including in marginally better-off parts of China, where they work on farms and in factories and where some women have been lured into forced marriages.

In 2019, the bodies of 39 young Vietnamese were found in a container truck in southeastern England in an apparent people-smuggling tragedy.