A Myanmar district court has sentenced 33 local human traffickers to life imprisonment for trafficking dozens of young women to an unidentified neighboring country during the last three months, an official newspaper reported Monday.

The 33 human traffickers, sentenced by the Yamethin district special court in Mandalay division, were among the 51 arrested by the Myanmar police force between last December and February this year with the cooperation of its neighboring counterpart, the New Light of Myanmar said, adding that 13 other foreign traffickers were also nabbed.

According to the report, the human traffickers deceived 49 young Myanmar women to work in a neighboring country, promising them that they will be well paid.

In lasts September, Myanmar authorities also nabbed a 30-member human trafficking gang on the Myanmar-China border in cooperation with the Chinese police force for trafficking 180 Myanmar young women to Ruili in southwest China's Yunnan Province by means of forced marriage and fake marriage, according to the Home Ministry.

To step up the momentum in cracking down on human trafficking, the Myanmar authorities have formed nine special units to combat such crimes in nine township areas bordering China, the sources said.

In August last year, two Myanmar human traffickers -- a woman and a man, were sentenced to long-year imprisonments by a local court in Muse for respectively persuading a girl residing in Kutkai to marry a Chinese man and enticing two girls with false promise for better work in Ruili and selling them there, it said.

Meanwhile, Myanmar formed the Central Committee for Anti- Trafficking in Persons in March last year to step up cracking down on such crime.

According to the ministry, Myanmar had exposed 748 human trafficking cases since July 2002 up to September last year, arresting 1,484 such traffickers including 669 women, and rescuing 3,694 victims including 1,790 women.

Source: Xinhua