Lilongwe Principal Resident Magistrate Roderick Michongwe Tuesday sentenced three China nationals Zhang Yan Qing, Yan Hu Zhou and Mian Mian Chen each to six years imprisonment for human trafficking.
The three, two men and a woman, were arrested in May last year for allegedly attempting to traffic two Malawian girls to China.
It was reported after their arrest that they were leaving the country through Kamuzu International Airport with a claim that the two men had married the Malawian girls.
The female Chinese woman, Chen, had reportedly offered money to the girls’ parents to coerce them to accept the marriage of their children to the men who would take them to China.
She also kept the girls at her house for two weeks before the day of departure.
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In court, the three pleaded not guilty to charges bordering on trafficking in persons before the State paraded five witnesses who helped it to secure the convictions.
Passing his sentence, Michongwe said the three were well organised in their criminal enterprise by posing as husbands (the two men) while the intention was to exploit their victims in the Asian country.
During hearing of the case, State prosecutor Louis Makiyi told the court that the two men illegally married the girls who are aged 20 and 22 in March last year.
“The State is asking for lengthy sentences because the accused took advantage of the victims’ poverty to persuade them to China for the purpose of sexual exploitation,” Makiyi said.
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One of the now-sentenced convicts, Qing, prayed for leniency, through their lawyer, on grounds of his disability. He does not have both arms.
But Michongwe quashed the mitigation argument, saying a disability should not be used as a tool for breaking the law.
He went on to slap all the three with six-year “minimal sentences” on the basis that the convicts had not caused any harm to the girls.
Police investigations revealed that the three foreign nationals exploited weaknesses in government registries to process marriage certificates with Malawian women, which could also be aiding human trafficking.
The investigations further found that the marriage certificates were processed in less than a week, contrary to the 21-day legally required period.
The marriage procedure at a district commissioner’s office demands one to file a notice, which runs for 21 days, before a certificate can be issued.
Malawi has in recent years found itself in a web of trafficking scenarios with the most prominent one being the exploitation of women and girls in Oman.
Meanwhile, deputy spokesperson for Central West Region Police Foster Benjamin has said the law enforcers will bring to book all perpetrators of crime, including human trafficking, to book.
