The growing gender imbalance and fast-aging population in China has aggravated the problem of bride trafficking from Asian countries, especially, poor neighbours.
It is now not restricted to South East Asia but the Chinese traffickers have started targetting South Asian nations such as Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh now. North Korea remains the biggest source of human trafficking for marriage and sexual slavery.
Myanmar, Vietnam, and Cambodia have been the major destinations for Chinese traffickers for the past two decades.
Now, there have been recent reports of bride trafficking from Nepal, North Korea, and Pakistan, said Visalaakshi Annamalai, a research fellow at the New York-based Model International Mobility Convention. One such case recently alarmed Bangladesh as well.
Forced or arranged marriages to Chinese men through trickery, which often end in sexual slavery, have seen a sharp rise since 2016 even as they spiralled up during the Covid pandemic.
The 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the US Department of State said the Beijing government and courts failed to prosecute human traffickers and punish them.
“Tales of deception are common. Agents, brokers, or traffickers may promise women jobs such as farmworkers or in the service industry in China, but often subsequently sell the women into sexual slavery,” Annamalai said.
In 2024, a woman in Bangladesh was forced to get her daughter married to a Chinese man named Cui Po Wei on the pretext that the man was Muslim, settled in the country and worked in local Gazipur city.
But later the bride was sent to a brothel in China. Subsequently, the mother filed a complaint against the husband and those involved in the arranging the marriage.
“The accused are organised human traffickers who took advantage of our helplessness… and trafficked my daughter to China for sexual exploitation and forced prostitution,” she said in the complaint.
Chinese Embassy washed its hands of the matter saying it did not receive any formal notification from the Dhaka government.
A few years ago, Nepal authorities arrested four Chinese men who were trafficking five Nepali women to China.
Pakistan saw a surge in bride trafficking as the number of Chinese persons increased in the country for the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
A few years ago, over 600 poor Pakistani girls were sold to Chinese men, a federal investigation found.
These women were subjected to abuse, forced pregnancies, and forced prostitution. However, Islamabad did not take any action.
“The government worryingly dismissed them, fearing that an investigation would harm relations with China,” said Marcus Andreopoulos, a senior research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Foundation.
“In the past, there have been connections between nefarious actors involved in human trafficking and other Pakistani state agencies.”
Ten of thousands of women are trafficked from North Korea to China for marriage and sexual slavery.
“The government did not undertake efforts to identify or refer to care trafficking victims within the PRC’s highly vulnerable North Korean migrant population, nor did it provide suspected North Korean trafficking victims with legal alternatives to repatriation,” it reads.
Lee Yum who tried to defect from North Korea was sold to a brothel operator by the broker she had a deal with. “When I found out, I felt so humiliated,” she said.
“I started crying and asked to leave, but the boss said he had paid a lot of money for me and I now had a debt towards him.”
The 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report released by the US Department of State said the Beijing government and courts failed to prosecute human traffickers and punish them.
“For the seventh consecutive year, the government did not report complete law enforcement data, nor did it report identifying any trafficking victims or referring them to protection services,” it reads.
Annamalai highlighted the bureaucratic negligence and corruption in China that hampers efforts to contain bride trafficking.
“In the interior of the country, Chinese authorities have also reportedly dismissed pleas by trafficked women, detained them for months on end, repatriated them without their children, and in some cases returned them to their husbands in exchange for bribes,” she said.
The US report also slammed the Chinese government for not making sufficient efforts to prevent trafficking and abetted or perpetrated trafficking.
“The government did not undertake efforts to identify or refer to care trafficking victims within the PRC’s highly vulnerable North Korean migrant population, nor did it provide suspected North Korean trafficking victims with legal alternatives to repatriation,” it reads.
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