Barely able to make enough money to survive
in her hometown, Sok Chenda* picked up her passport and a few belongings last
year and headed to the provincial capital of Kampong Cham.
It was
a journey she would regret.
The
eldest daughter among five siblings, Chenda, 28, had worked long and uncomfortable
hours in a garment factory for several years prior to that fateful trip. After
her mother fell ill, the family took out loans to pay for her treatment and for
materials to build a new home, dragging them into a cycle of debt repayments
that has crippled the lives of so many impoverished Cambodians.
Just as
the situation seemed more dire than ever, Chenda met a young man claiming to
represent a factory in China that needed to bolster its workforce. The promises
he made – better working conditions and a minimum salary of more than 12 times
what she was making in Cambodia – must have seemed too good to be true.
Chenda
would soon discover they were. After arriving in a town in Jiangxi province,
she was soon taken to a “brides’ house” with many other Cambodian women, where
she stayed until she was sold to a Chinese man, according to the Cambodian
Legal Education Centre (CLEC), which has assisted with her case. Not long
after, the abuses and humiliation began, she claims.
“I
agreed to go to work in China, but when I arrived, after just five days, they
brought me to a ‘brides’ house’ with many Khmer women to wait for Chinese men
to buy us for their wives,” she said.
Chinese
men have long sought brides from countries including Myanmar and Laos due to a
gender imbalance at least partly caused by China’s one-child policy and the
traditional preference for having boys.
But
Chenda’s case, along with several dozen similar ones reported since 2012, have
led rights groups to suggest that brokers in Cambodia are beginning to cash in
on the vulnerability of poor Cambodian women. The Ministry of Interior recorded
35 cases of Cambodians trafficked to China last year, although the vast
majority of cases go unreported.
A far
cry from the relatively moneyed life she expected to live in rural Jiangxi,
Chenda said she soon found herself living a tormented existence as a sex slave
to her new husband and effectively an indentured servant to her in-laws.
“I was
his wife, but he did not value me. After I stayed at his parents’ house for
several days, he started to treat me cruelly, kicking me off the bed when I
refused to have sex with him. And he choked me almost to death, and my parents-in-law
forced me to work as their [domestic] slave,” she said.
“When I
did something wrong a little bit, they beat me nearly unconscious.”
Repeated
escape attempts were thwarted, Chenda says, and when caught, she was dunked in
icy water and her clothes confiscated. “I thought I would lose my life.”
Soon,
Chenda got pregnant. Worried for her health and the future of her unborn child,
she tried a new strategy after her escape attempts failed.
“I did
not know how to protect myself, so I pretended to be mad, throwing urine and
faeces at them. Then they stopped treating me badly and promised to send me
back home after I delivered the baby.
“But
after delivering the baby, for two months, they still did not send me back
home, so I continued to act mad and threatened to kill the whole family. Then
they agreed to send me back home,” she said.
Meurn
Sok, Chenda’s mother, said she was “horrified” to learn of the abuse heaped
upon her daughter, now back in her home this past month. But “she survived”,
she quietly added, her face betraying the intense emotions the ordeal had
visited on their family.
Huy
Pichsovann, labour rights program officer at CLEC, said Chenda’s claims of
abuse are credible and not particularly uncommon, as more and more Cambodian
women seek work abroad to escape poverty at home.
He
added there is evidence of complicity in trafficking by local authorities in
China.
“Cambodian
woman tried to seek for intervention from the Chinese police, but they
considered the matter a family conflict without thinking of human trafficking;
they did not send Cambodian women to the Cambodian embassy. Instead, the women
were sent back to their husband’s families,” he said.
Cheng
Hongbo, chief of the political section of China’s embassy in Phnom Penh, said
China has signed agreements with governments in the region to combat
trafficking and that he was “highly concerned” by cases such as Chenda’s.
“The
Chinese law enforcement authorities have recently cracked down [on] several
criminals who [were] trafficking Cambodian women to China. Surely we will
continue to do that and also strengthen the cooperation with the Cambodian
side,” he wrote in an email.
“China
has a total of 1,372 administration and relief shelters located in cities
across the country, which provide temporary support to trafficking victims. So
if there [are] any cases, it is strongly suggested that the victims report to
the local police or relief shelters, where they can get timely and valid help.”
Chiv
Phally, deputy director of the Interior Ministry’s anti-human trafficking unit,
which has made a number of recent arrests of brokers, declined to comment for
this story, saying only: “My forces always intercept human-trafficking cases.”
According
to a court document seen by the Post, Chenda was divorced from her husband on
April 6, after 10 months of wedlock. The couple’s child stayed with the family
in Jiangxi, and Chenda has only been offered visiting rights, she says.
Visibly
traumatised by the experience, she had a warning for other women considering
moving to work in China.
“Cambodian
women who want to work in China as factory workers should not go; they play
tricks on us and sell us as slaves. Working in Cambodia earns little money, but
at least we can understand each other and they [bosses] do not abuse us,” she
said.
Additional Reporting By Daniel Pye
*Names
have been changed to protect the victim and her family.
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