Police rescue 22 women forced into prostitution

Police have freed 22 women who were forced to become sex workers in a south China city, local authorities said. Six suspects have been arrested in connection with the case. The women were lured by job promises to the city of Xiamen in southeast China's Fujian Province, where the suspects "used all sorts of methods" to force them to work in an entertainment parlor as sex workers, police said. Police raided the parlor in downtown Xiamen on Saturday night after being tipped off by two abducted women who fled a rented house on the outskirts of the city. The women were kept in the house when they weren't working. The women rescued by the police were abducted from other parts of Fujian, as well as the inland provinces of Henan and Sichuan and the municipality of Chongqing, police said. Their story is not rare in China. Over the past decade, young people from rural inland provinces have left their hometowns in record numbers to seek jobs in bustling metropolises on the country's eastern coast. Young women from the countryside, eager to take high-paying jobs but with little life experience outside of their villages, have become easy prey for human trafficking rings.