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

[geovalin]

Dozens of Cambodian women and girls are taken to China each year, where they are forced to marry local men. Only the lucky ones manage to escape

 

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.”

 

read more https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/3189508/i-was-screaming-help-sold-brides-china-few