'Sold By My Brother:' Mekong Women Pressed Into Marriage In China
'China Brides,' Trafficking: AFP, 'Sold By My Brother': Mekong women pressed into marriage in China, 12/16/18. Excerpts:
Everyone did well from Nary's marriage to a Chinese man, except the young Cambodian bride herself, who returned home from the six-year ordeal destitute, humiliated and with little prospect of seeing her son again. Her brother ran away with $3,000 after cajoling the then 17-year-old to leave Cambodia to marry. Brokers split the remaining $7,000 paid by her Chinese husband, who got himself a longed-for heir.
She is one of tens of thousands of young Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laos and Myanmar women - and girls -who marry Chinese men each year, plugging a gender gap incubated by Beijing's three-decade-long one-child policy. While the policy has ended, a shortfall of around 33 million women has left the same number of men facing life on the shelf.
Poverty drives many women from the Mekong region to gamble on marriage in China, double-locked by low education levels and a social expectation to provide for parents. But new domestic realities frequently unravel, leaving women at risk of abuse, detention under Chinese immigration law or 'resale' into prostitution.
To buy a wife in China costs between $10,000 and $15,000, a sum paid to brokers who give a couple of thousand to overseas associates for recruiting the brides. A 'dowry' of between $1,000 and $3,000 is dangled in front of the bride's family, while the young woman herself is last in the money chain, if she receives anything at all.
The marriage trade is big business -- official figures say 10,000 Cambodian women alone are registered in the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guizhou and Yunnan. Brides are often 'warehoused' on arrival and their photos touted on WeChat and dating websites to would-be husbands.
A woman who is paid, bought or sold for marriage and taken across borders - even with consent - is classified as a trafficking victim by the United Nations...http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/sold-by-my-brother-the-mekong-women-pressed-into-marriage-in-china/ar-BBQMZjS?ocid=HPCOMMDHP15
Nary (R) is back home in Cambodia with her mother now, but fears she may never see her son again after her marriage to a Chinese man collapsed.
