Antislavery Usable Past

Seng Ja Ban

2019 (Narrative date)

The Global Slavery Index 2018 estimates that on any given day in 2016 there were over 3.8 million people living in conditions of modern slavery in China. Women and girls from South Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa are trafficked in to forced marriage in the country for fees of up to £30,000. The gender imbalance caused by the One Child Policy and the cultural preference for male children, has caused a shortage of women which has led to the trafficking of women to be sold as brides. As a result many women find themselves either deceived by promises of employment, sold or abducted and forced into marrying Chinese men who have paid for them.

Seng Ja Ban and her friend were offered work in a restaurant in China, and the travel to get there, by a broker. A second broker took her to Kumming, the capital city of Yunnan province and left her in a train station. There, two Chinese men grabbed her and the friend she was travelling with and forced them on to a train. With no money and unable to communicate, Seng Ja Ban stayed on the train for three days. Ja Ban and her friend were separated and Seng Ja Ban was forced to marry a Chinese man. She was able to escape after 5 years, however her friend never made it back to Myanmar and Seng Ja Ban had to leave her child behind.

I believed her and thought I was so lucky.

The broker told me there would be no need to use it [my ID card] in China, and if someone found it, they would know we were illegal. So that’s why she took the ID card.

[…]

Me and my friend tried to stay together – we held each other and tried to stay together. But the Chinese men got mad and dragged us apart. I had to go with the Chinese husband.

I was locked in the room for one year. Before I had a baby, the family members – especially the mother in law – treated me badly. Her face was furious. Sometimes they didn’t feed me because I didn’t get pregnant as soon as possible.

They gave me many medicines. I did not know what they were…Once a week I was injected. Sometimes I had a big drip [of intravenous fluid]. Every week they took me to the clinic. I did not know what the medicine was, or why I had to take it. Sometimes I had to try herbal medicine and they cooked it and boiled it and I had to drink it. I assume it was to make me pregnant. Some of the medicines made me allergic. Sometimes I became itchy on my skin.

After we give birth, no one cares about us anymore.

I did not give birth naturally, I had to have an operation. When I did this, the Chinese family told the doctor to cut a part of my womb so that I could not have any more children. I didn’t know this at the time. When I came back to Myanmar I went to the hospital and got news and was told that a part of my womb doesn’t work, so I cannot have a baby.

Narrative provided by Human Rights Watch in their report “Give Us a Baby and We’ll Let You Go”: Trafficking of Kachin “Brides” from Myanmar to China

Country

Theme

Forced marriage

Type

Narrative

Tags

VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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