~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2001]

China's booming trade in Vietnamese brides

HO CHI MINH CITY - She met her future husband at a downtown cafeteria, but even that beginning was shorn of romance. Li, just 17, had been practically dragged there by her mother, who had decided to marry her off to a Taiwanese stranger - in exchange for US$3,500. The newly-weds were soon off to Taiwan, where Li tried to play wife to her 50-year-old husband. He, however, had other things in mind and forced her to have sex with his "brothers". After 10 months of being wife-cum-sex worker, Li managed to escape and alert local police.

Li is only one of the growing number of Vietnamese women, many of them still in their teens, being forced into becoming "family wives" after getting married to men from Taiwan and mainland China. According to Vietnamese authorities, some are even sold by their husbands to pimps or simply to just another "owner". To be sure, there are Taiwanese and mainland Chinese men who marry Vietnamese women and are content to have them only as "traditional wives". Take the case of Tai, a 50-year-old Taiwanese who has just married a Vietnamese woman half his age. He explains why he flew so far just to find a bride: "I could never get married at home since most of the women I knew were looking down on me." Vietnamese authorities, however, say that reports of Vietnamese women being turned into "family wives" by their Taiwanese husbands are growing. At the same time, they say that even "normal" unions are problematic. More often than not, these marriages are made through marriage brokers - an illegal trade in Vietnam - and also involve some form of payment to the bride's family.

A Taiwanese groom typically pays between US$5,000 and US$10,000 to marry a Vietnamese woman. This includes a dowry for the bride's family, wedding expenses and a matchmaking fee, which costs upwards of $1,000. The "wives" normally receive a small percentage of the cash paid to the brokers. The marriage brokers evade the law by operating within legitimate travel agencies or law firms. They arrange everything from the initial introduction to catering the wedding to passport documentation. The grooms-to-be choose their potential mates from photographs, then fly to Ho Chi Minh City to meet them at mixers organized by matchmakers. Most of the Taiwanese men who come over seeking mates are more than 50 years old, from middle and lower class rural families and with minimal education. Their would-be brides, meanwhile, are desperate to escape from poverty - or at least their families are - and see marriage to a foreigner as a shortcut to a better life.

The Taiwanese immigration office in Ho Chi Minh City says that it handles between 30 and 40 visa applications a day. But unofficial estimates put the number of Vietnamese women who have married Taiwanese men in recent years at more than 17,000. The Taiwanese office here also says that interviews with visa applicants last just five minutes, and approval is virtually guaranteed. One visa officer says that they really have no right to question the motives behind these marriages. He says, "If they insist [on approval], you have no choice, you just say yes." Marriages between Vietnamese women and mainland Chinese men go through a different route, but many share the same unhappy endings as numerous Vietnamese-Taiwanese unions. Ta Thi Minh Ly, head of the Legal Assistance Department of the Ministry of Justice, says that in 1998 alone authorities found 3,354 women being sold to China through the northern port city of Hai Phong, 1,310 through the Quang Ninh border and another 3,000 through the Lang Son border.

"The problem is men in China are more numerous than women so they are unable to find domestic wives," says Ly. "Vietnamese women are trafficked there to meet demand. Some traffickers even woo innocent girls and promise to marry them. Thus the girls, mostly from poor and remote localities, are easily driven into their trap." Truong Huu Quoc, who heads the Hanoi Police Department, describes what is happening as "an adverse side of the market economy". He says the slave trade rings are well-organized domestically and internationally. He adds that the rings have ground contacts in many of the poor provinces around Vietnam who deceive potential victims. He says of the women - and children - who end up as unwilling brides in China: "They lose everything - liberty, personalities and other rights." A report released last year by the Ministry of Public Security confirms the existence of this wife-trafficking, and cites statistics showing that at least 22,000 women and children were "sent" to China from 1991 to 1999.

"The real figure could be much higher because in the past decade, China has surged as a huge market for Vietnamese wives," says Quoc. "Trafficking of Vietnamese women and children to China has increased rapidly in recent years." According to the ministry report, more than 11,000 of those women who were tricked into going to China found their way home and told tales of unbearable treatment at the hands of their husbands. These echo those of women escaping their Taiwanese husbands. Says the report: "Some Vietnamese women are forced to become common wives for all the members of the husband's family. They are even traded like goods."

By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam - Inter Press Service, Asia Times - September 12, 2001.