Slavery in The 21st Century

workers or house help. Most women become “sex slaves” or forced laborers who are
later resold to human traffickers to defray the cost.
According to the Punjabi writer, Kirpal Kazak, bride-selling began in Jharkhand after the
arrival of the Rajputs. The tribe decorate the women for sale with ornaments. The
practice of the sale of women as brides declined after the Green Revolution in India, the
“spread of literacy”, and the improvement of the male-female ratio since 1911. The ratio,
however, declined in 2001. The practice of bride-purchasing became confined to the
poor sections of society such as farmers, Scheduled Castes, and tribes. In povertystricken
families, only one son gets married due to poverty and to “avoid the division of
landed property”.
China
Bride buying is also an old tradition in China. The practice was largely stamped out by
the Chinese Communists. However, the modern practice is "not unusual in rural
villages"; it is also known as mercenary marriage. According to Ding Lu of the nongovernmental
organization All-China Women's Federation, the practice had a
resurgence due to China’s surging economy. From 1991 to 1996, Chinese police
rescued upwards of 88,000 women and children who had been sold into marriage and
slavery, and the Chinese government claimed that 143,000 traffickers involved were
caught and prosecuted. Some human rights groups state that the figures are not correct
and that the real number of abducted women is higher. Bay Fang and Mark Leong
reported in U.S. News & World Report that "the government sees the commerce in
wives as a shameful problem, it has only in recent years begun to provide any statistics,
and it tries to put the focus on the women who have been saved rather than on the
continuing trade." Causes include poverty and bride shortage in the rural areas (rural
women go to the cities to work). As women leave rural areas to find work in cities, they
are considered more vulnerable to being "tricked or forced into becoming chattel for
men desperate for wives." The shortage of brides in turn is due to amplification of the
traditional preference of Chinese couples for sons by the 1979 one-child policy in China.
The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated that in 1998 there were 120 men
for every 100 women, with imbalances in rural areas being about 130 males for every
100 females. The increase in the cost of dowries is also a contributing factor leading
men to buy women for wives. Human Rights in China states that it is more affordable for
a man to buy a wife from a trafficker for 2,000 to 4,000 yuan than to pay a traditional
dowry, which often runs upwards of 10,000 yuan. For the average urban worker, wife
selling is an affordable option when in 1998 China urban workers make approximately
$60 a month. Brides for sale are outsourced from countries such as Burma, Laos,
Vietnam and North Korea. The bride-traders sell women as brides or as prostitutes
depending on their physical appearance. A common trick employed by bride-brokers in
acquiring brides for sale is the offer of a job such as in factories and instead kidnapping
them. Bride-traders can sell a young woman for the price of US$250 to US$800. US$50
to US$100 of the original price goes to the primary kidnappers while the rest of the
income goes to the traffickers who bring the bride to the main client.
Page 106 of 161