Wife-selling rampant in Vietnam
HANOI - There are increasing concerns in Vietnam
about the practice of wife-selling.
Agents who sell young women to would-be
husbands are operating quite openly in the
country's largest city, Ho Chi Minh City,
formerly Saigon.
A majority of purchasers are Taiwanese men
who take their wives back home.
Men looking for a Vietnamese wife can pay
anything between $2,500 and $8,000.
Selection
Agents introduce the men to a range of
women.
Once the man has
made his selection, the
agent can provide
paperwork to show
that the couple are
married.
The women who put
themselves up for sale
in this way generally
come from poor rural
households and are
hoping to get some
money.
In reality, however, they normally receive a
small percentage of the cash paid to the
agent.
According to the Vietnamese press, there are
at least 4,000 Vietnamese wives in Taiwan
who have been purchased in this way.
Many unhappy
A few have managed to establish satisfactory
relationships with their new husbands but
many are unhappy and, in some cases, even
sold into prostitution.
The Vietnamese police say that since there is
no law banning Vietnamese women from
marrying foreigners, there is little they can do
to stop the practice.
They say that if the women do manage to get
some money out of their new husbands they
often send it back to their families in Vietnam.
As a result, many of the families are reluctant
to tell the police what has happened.
By Owen Bennett Jones - BBC News Service - March 13, 2001.
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