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Abused, raped: heart-wrenching stories of Pakistani brides trafficked to China
- The death of Christian woman Samiya David reveals the extent of the abuse trafficked Pakistani girls face in China
- The people smuggling networks are operated by Pakistani and Chinese brokers who cruise Christian areas willing to sell daughters
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Sold by her family as a bride to a Chinese man, Samiya David spent only two months in China. When she returned to Pakistan, the once robust woman was nearly unrecognisable: malnourished, too weak to walk, her speech confused and disjointed.
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“Do not ask me about what happened to me there” was her only reply to her family’s questions, her cousin Pervaiz Masih said.
Within just a few weeks, she was dead.
David’s mysterious death adds to a growing body of evidence of mistreatment and abuses against Pakistani women and girls, mainly Christians, who have been trafficked to China as brides.
Associated Press (AP) investigations have found that traffickers have increasingly targeted Pakistan’s impoverished Christian population over the past two years, paying desperate families to give their daughters and sisters, some of them teenagers, into marriage with Chinese men.
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Once in China, the women are often isolated, neglected, abused and sold into prostitution, frequently contacting home to plead to be brought back. Some women have told the AP and activists that their husbands at times refused to feed them.
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