Rescue operations to recover sold brides in China put on halt as COVID-19 travel bans continues

Anti-trafficking groups have suspended rescue operations of “brides” from China amid Coronavirus travel restrictions.

Promising of providing a lucrative jobs thousands of women have been lured to China only to be sold as forced brides to maintain the gender equilibrium.

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 of these women are prostituted to the neighbor hood while others are married to mentally ill men, who physically torture them. 

Michael Brosowski, head of Hanoi-based Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation said that,”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.

“Getting to remote places, it’s just not possible now – and even if you could, the borders are closed,” Brosowski told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

While Blue Dragon remains in touch with 27 women who have called for help in 2020, Phnom Penh-based anti-trafficking charity Chab Dai said it has lost contact with some who fled their abusers amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Chinese men typically pay brokers between $10,000 and $20,000 for a foreign wife, a 2016 United Nations report said.

Targets are tempt by the promise of a luxury life in China, and while some do marry happily and send money home to their families, others end are facing sexual abuse, violence and exploitation.