CAPTION ONLY: 11 TO DIE FOR KIDNAPPING AND SELLING CHINESE WOMEN

A Chinese man rests in front of a billboard that urges residents to "respect women and protect children" in Beijing Tuesday. Eleven people have been sentenced to die for kidnapping young women and selling them as wives to farmers in poor villages in what one newspaper called China's most serious kidnapping case yet. Thirty-seven other kidnappers were sentenced to prison, including two who received death sentences that could be commuted to life imprisonment. The case involved 102 women from western Sichuan province who were sold at prices from $94 to $530 to farmers in other provinces. The women were lured away from labor markets and railway stations with promises of work in the medical and textile industries, then taken to distant villages, one daily said. Among the kidnappers were 17 women, some of whom had themselves been kidnapped and had turned to crime.