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« on: April 17, 2024, 11:20:48 PM »
Viral video highlights targeting of Hmong women to marry Chinese men
Many of the young women who accept the marriage offers end up victims of human trafficking in China.
The man behind the phone chuckles as he calls out in the Hmong language to villagers sitting around a raised wooden home in rural Laos.
A young man in a yellow hooded sweatshirt offers a slightly embarrassed smile, while other men gathered around a motorbike appear to pay him no mind.
The camera zooms in on two young women who look shocked or turn away, as others laugh, before it settles on a girl barely in her teens, sitting atop a bike between two other children.
This 30-second video, shot in an undisclosed location in Laos, went viral late last month after it was posted to Facebook, along with dialogue warning of ethnic Hmong middlemen working as interpreters for Chinese nationals seeking Hmong women and girls as wives.
While the offer of marriage can be a financial leg up for largely poor Hmong villagers in rural Laos, many women who accept end up victims of human trafficking, according to a Lao official, who is calling on authorities to take action against the middlemen.
Some of the women end up as forced laborers and sometimes face physical punishment, the official said.
“In the video, the middleman goes to a village and says that there are some Chinese men looking for Lao Hmong girls and women to be their wives,” a speaker of the Hmong language told Radio Free Asia.
“The video doesn’t mention the province, district, or village,” he said. “It’s only clear that Chinese men are looking for Lao Hmong wives.”
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