A Cambodian teen who made a plea for help on Facebook after being sold to a Chinese man and held against her will in Zhejiang province, China has been rescued, Chinese authorities say.
Authorities took action after the 16-year-old girl made a Facebook plea sharing her horrid experience, a Cambodian Foreign Ministry spokesman told Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Mar. 11.
The Facebook video, along with a written message, detailed how she was tricked by job brokers into traveling to China.
Hailing from eastern Tbong Khmum province in Cambodia, the girl, along with three of her friends, were told by job brokers in August last year that they would each earn $700 a month by working at a market in China. This is around four times what the average Cambodian earns every month.
However, when they arrived in China, they were kept in a room where many other Cambodian and Vietnamese women and girls were being held against their will, the girl explained.
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A Chinese man came to buy the girl, separating her from her other friends. She was then taken to the man’s family home in Zhejiang province, where he lives with his relatives.
For more than six months she was forced to live in servitude.
Speaking to RFA, the girl said she was regularly beaten and insulted. She was also chased and locked in a room and forced to have sex with the man, who she said had hopes of getting her pregnant.
“I couldn’t go anywhere. I would eat and then they would chase me back into the room,” she told RFA via Facebook Messenger. “I was worse than a prisoner. I couldn’t think of anything or do anything, but sit and cry alone.”
Worse still, the man’s family threatened to hurt her should she report her case to authorities or attempt to reach her family in Cambodia, she said.
Her Facebook plea was critical in obtaining her freedom.
“I really want to go back,” she wrote, according to a translation by Facebook. “I just got to use Facebook and not many people know me, if you don’t have any friends, please please help me to share.”
Suntory said that the Cambodian consul in Shanghai alerted police to the video and joined them in saving her from the family home.
Currently, the girl is safe with Cambodian consulate officials, and is working with Chinese investigators on the case, Suntory told RFA. Soon, she will be returned home to Cambodia, he added.
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Human trafficking across China
Am Sam Ath, a member of the human rights group Licadho, said the Cambodian government needs to do more to prevent Cambodian women from being caught up in such situations.
“And this is the role of the embassy that should hurry up to help its citizens,” he told RFA before the girl’s rescue on Mar. 10.
The girl is one of many victims of ongoing human trafficking across China and Cambodia.
In 2020, Reuters reported a “pandemic” of “bride trafficking” from Cambodia to China. That year saw a massive rise of women and girls being sold to China as brides, catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic which had led to massive job losses.
Criminal networks continue to showcase promising jobs, only for women to be sold away.
Chinese teens are also being sold into forced labor in Cambodia.
A story on the site Sixth Tone in 2022 told of a Chinese teen being sent to the Cambodian city Sihanoukville to work as a cyber scammer.
