‘I was screaming for help’: sold as brides in China, few Cambodian women escape their fate

As the January sun sets over verdant rice fields somewhere in Cambodia’s western Pursat province, Kunthea’s two-year-old clamours onto her lap. Sitting on a daybed, clad in a black and orange tie-dye T-shirt, she is quietly savouring a moment with one of her two children. They are the reasons, after divorcing her first husband in 2020, she picked up a job at a toy factory in central Cambodia, even though that meant leaving her children in her cousin’s care halfway across the country.

But as the economic slowdown spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Kunthea’s already meagre salary was slashed in half. This left the single mother was earning just US$120 per month working 12-hour shifts daily, barely enough to sustain her family.

So when in October 2020 a fellow factory worker told her she could be making US$1,100 a month doing similar work in China, Kunthea didn’t hesitate. “I have two children to raise so it’s very hard for me,” she says. “When I heard that I would earn a high salary I just wanted to go without thinking.”

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