Sok Suosdey had always worked hard to help support her family in Cambodia’s Oddar Meanchey province, on the border with Thailand, but no matter what she did, they remained poor.
In 2016, things became even more dire when her family was saddled with repayment of a loan to a local bank.
So when a neighbor approached her that year with the opportunity to make a higher salary in China, Sok Suosdey - who asked to use a pseudonym for this report to protect her privacy - leapt at the chance.
After making the necessary preparations, she departed to the bustling city of Shanghai, excited with the prospect of becoming financially independent in China and helping her family get free from debt back home.
But around a month after her arrival, the woman who had promised her a job told her she would have to marry a deaf Chinese man and if she refused, she would be on the hook for the costs associated with her relocation to China - a sum far beyond her ability to pay.
Sok Suosdey agreed, but said that after her marriage, she was reduced to “a slave” in her husband’s home.
She was made to take a job to earn money for the family, but her mother-in-law also forced her to do household chores whenever she had a break, and subjected her to relentless physical and mental abuse, she said.
“Every day, my mother-in-law chased me to work from 10 am-11 pm, sometimes until 2 am,” she told RFA Khmer. “I only slept three hours a night, and I worked very hard. When I was at home, I also worked as a seamstress, sometimes as a laborer, or putting springs into children’s water guns.”
Sok Suosdey said that if she needed new clothes, she was made to buy them with her own money.
Her mother-in-law also refused to let her communicate with Cambodian friends she made or with family members back home, as “she was afraid I would run away from home.”
“My Chinese mother-in-law insulted me and made me hurtful and fed up,” she said.
Things were no different after having a child with her husband.
“The most painful thing was that after I gave birth to a son, my mother-in-law kept me away from him and didn’t let him know who I was,” she said. “She wouldn’t let me take care of him and would even call the police when I tried to take him to school.”
Trafficking to China
According to a report by the human rights group Adhoc, in the first nine months of 2024, at least 29 Cambodian women were trafficked to China. Of the trafficked women, 28 were forced to marry Chinese men.
According to the same source, in 2023, 28 Cambodian women were rescued from human trafficking in China.
The NGO said that some of the women who married Chinese men were beaten, abused and forced to work as slaves by their husbands and families. In addition to physically and mentally abusing the women, some families also forced them into sex work, leaving them traumatized, it said.
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‘He told me that if I ran away he would report me to the Chinese police’
Sok Suosdey told RFA that, because she could no longer endure the abuse, she saved enough money to buy a mobile phone and started to seek help via social media.
She started a group on Facebook for Cambodians in China and spent time searching for people she knew lived close to her parents back home. It was through these sources that she was able to contact her mother and get authorities at the Cambodian Consulate to intervene on her behalf.
On July 16, 2024 - seven years after being trafficked to China - Sok Suosdey finally returned home to her family in Cambodia.
Now 35, things have not been easy for Sok Suosdey back home, according to Sun Maly, the head of Adhoc’s Women’s Unit. She is the sole breadwinner of a household with an elderly mother, a father who was blinded during Cambodia’s civil war, and a younger brother with a mental disorder.
But despite the challenges, Sok Suosdey is thankful for her rescue and overjoyed to be reunited with her loved ones, she said.
Assisting victims
When victims of human trafficking return to Cambodia, they receive assistance from the Ministry of Social Affairs' Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation agency, which provides them with mental health treatment and rehabilitation.
However, the assistance is only temporary, and many victims face a long road to recovery.
Once a victim is released from the Ministry of Social Affairs, humanitarian groups such as Adhoc step in to provide additional help.
Adhoc’s Sun Maly said that her NGO now provides victims with sewing machines to help them achieve financial stability by starting their own business following their rescue.
“My case manager has helped to find skilled trainers who can help women victims in tailoring,” she said. “Most villages have tailors, but as they age out, a victim with the ability to sew can replace them by setting up their own garment business.”
Some victims told RFA that the Cambodian government needs to do more to pressure Chinese authorities to investigate claims of trafficking inside China.
Chou Bun Eng, the permanent deputy chair of the Ministry of Interior’s Anti-Trafficking Committee, told RFA that she has met with Chinese authorities in the past to highlight the need to investigate such claims.
However, she said that her Chinese counterparts regularly deny that there are any cases of Cambodian women being trafficked and forced into marriage in China - only consensual marriages. Domestic violence they classify as a “family dispute,” she said.
“I’m not saying that all cases involve trafficking - some Cambodian women pay money to be smuggled into China,” she acknowledged.
“But in general, most Cambodian women who go to China already have relatives in China who promise to help them find a husband with a good family. So, if they sign a marriage certificate and then domestic violence occurs, the authorities say it is a family dispute.”
The U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report ranked Cambodia as a “tier 3″ nation - the worst possible ranking - in 2023 and 2024.
In July, the State Department released a report which found that the Cambodian government did not meet international standards in its efforts to eradicate human trafficking, largely due to corruption amongst senior government officials.
Translated by Sum Sok Ry. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.