Vietnamese police have broken up a ring that trafficked young women to Malaysia, where they were promised jobs but instead were married off to local men.

The ring was uncovered after one of the women escaped, said the state-controlled Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper.

Police last Saturday arrested four organisers, women aged 33 to 44, in Tay Ninh province who over the past year used fake labour permits to dupe 11 women and send them via middlemen to new husbands in Malaysia, the report said.

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese women and children are trafficked every year -- mostly to China and Cambodia but also Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and South Korea - according to past surveys by the ministry of public security.

Unicef says the victims, 98 percent of whom are female, are mostly trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced marriages but also for forced labour, servitude and sometimes for adoption and the removal of organs.