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.
It seems selling brides is big business and more often than not ends in tears.
She is one of tens of thousands of young Cambodian, Vietnamese, Lao 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.
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.
In Cambodia, brokers and other third parties can be jailed for up to 15 years, longer if the victim is a minor.

But convictions are rare, with brokers paying up to $5,000 to buy victims’ silence.

Some very sad stories here and something that should be stopped.

Tens of thousands of Southeast Asian women have been lured to China to be sold as brides - now rescue operations have been forced to stop as COVID-19 travel bans take hold

By Matt Blomberg

PHNOM PENH, March 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Coronavirus travel restrictions have forced anti-trafficking groups to suspend rescue operations of Vietnamese and Cambodian "brides" from China, with some now in hiding having escaped the homes of men holding them against their will.

Over the past decade, tens of thousands of Southeast Asian women have been lured to China by criminal networks promising lucrative jobs, only to be sold as brides - some to abusive men - as China grapples with a gender imbalance.

Charities in Vietnam and Cambodia said some women who fled this year have been detained and shut off from communication, while others who are "not under immediate threat of being killed" have been advised to sit tight.

"Some say the husband is mentally ill, they're being beaten, maybe prostituted to the neighbours, their lives are in immediate danger at this point," said Michael Brosowski, head of Hanoi-based Blue Dragon Children's Foundation.

"They say they have to go, they have to go now. All we can do is advise them on a safe place to hide."

Blue Dragon rescued one women every three days on average from China in 2019, but was forced to freeze operations in late January as coronavirus travel restrictions took hold.
Full article: https://news.trust.org/item/20200312105756-uz7vx/