Tuesday, March 06, 2007AFP
In impoverished Cambodia, which lacks a professional law enforcement apparatus and an established system for brokered international marriages, women's advocates warn it is easier than elsewhere for prospective brides to fall victim to abuse.
Hopes of a comfortable life abroad end in disaster for many Asian brides, writes Ian Timberlake
Flora Chung thought she had a pretty happy life. She owned a successful fashion business in southern China and had a loving husband from Hong Kong.
The couple met in Guangzhou, her hometown. They hit it off, and were married not long after.
"He was very good to me. He used to come and see me and take me out all the time. When I was pregnant, he would do all the housework at home," said Chung, who sold her business cheaply and moved to Hong Kong to be with her husband - a decision she would later regret. "I was surprised how quickly a person could change."
Asia's wedding bells are increasingly sounding a cross-cultural tone as men and women look outside their own borders for partners.
While some couples find the love, happiness and security they are searching for, others discover that language and cultural barriers threaten their dream of wedded bliss.
In the worst cases, cross-border wives like Chung fall victim to physically abusive partners.
"Many foreign brides are simply regarded as tools for bearing children for their husbands," said Lu Hui-chuan, a social worker with Taiwan's nonprofit Eden Social Welfare Foundation.
In impoverished Cambodia, which lacks a professional law enforcement apparatus and an established system for brokered international marriages, women's advocates warn it is easier than elsewhere for prospective brides to fall victim to abuse.
"I thought my future would be bright after I went to Taiwan as a bride," said Bopha, 18, a rice farmer from Cambodia's rural Svay Rieng province near the border with Vietnam.
Promises of love were enough to persuade her to move to Taiwan and marry a restaurant owner.
She met her husband for the first time when he arrived with a marriage broker at her village hut. The broker told her family that he was a rich bachelor who lived alone in a modern country.
After arriving in Taiwan she discovered she was the man's second wife. He forbade her from leaving the house, where she cared for an elderly woman claiming to be her mother-in-law.
"I was not a wife of a rich Taiwanese man, I was a housekeeper with no salary," Bopha said. "It was hell. I can't imagine how I could live in that situation."
A Taiwanese group and the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre later freed her.
Mu Sochua, formerly Cambodia's minister of women's and veterans' affairs, said extreme poverty is driving more women to marry foreigners.
"She doesn't know clearly about the groom's background and he can be any size or age - just as long as he whisks her to live and work in the second country," Mu Sochua said.
Taiwan has become one of Asia's major destinations for foreign spouses. Most come from China and its territories, a fact which gives Taiwan's cross-cultural marriages the added burden of being tied into the island's delicate politics. Wives from the mainland complain of discrimination because of the hostility between Taipei and Beijing. The island has received more than 380,000 foreign spouses over the past 20 years, more than 65 percent of them from Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland, according to interior ministry figures.
According to Taiwan law, women from China are eligible to apply for local identity cards only after they stay for a minimum of eight years, compared with three years for women from other countries. "I don't know why we women from the mainland are being treated in such an unfair way. Also because of my accent, I was regarded as a second-class citizen. The feeling is uncomfortable," said Cui Xiaoling, a native of central China who married a Taiwanese six years ago.
Taiwan's immigration authorities say the strict law is aimed at deterring rampant false marriages, largely for purposes of prostitution.
But mainland brides are not the only ones who have trouble adjusting to life in Taiwan.
In a disturbing case, Taipei prosecutors said Friday they would seek the death penalty for a man who conspired with his brother to murder the latter's Vietnamese wife to claim on her insurance policy. Lee Tai-an and Lee Shuang-chuan were suspected of sabotaging rail tracks in March last year to cause the derailment of a train that Shuang- chuan's wife, Chen Hong-chen, was on. While she was in hospital recovering from the accident, her husband murdered her with a injection of snake poison, the prosecutors said.
They said that five years earlier, Lee Shuang- chuan - who committed suicide within days of the train crash - had lost his second wife, also a Vietnamese, after she was allegedly bitten by a snake. He claimed US$161,000 (HK$1.26 million) in insurance.
Official figures say 19.8 percent of Taiwan's foreign spouses are from Vietnam. Another 6.8 percent come from Indonesia, 2.46 percent from Thailand, 1.59 percent from the Philippines and 1.18 percent from Cambodia.
There is also strong demand for Vietnamese and Cambodian brides in Singapore, said Martin Wong, Singapore managing director for Mr Cupid International Matchmakers, one of many agencies that help arrange foreign brides for bachelors in the wealthy, majority ethnic-Chinese city state.
To boost demand for women from Fujian province, the agency offered a special Lunar New Year discount for grooms who committed to marry a Fujianese woman, Wong said.
In many cases, men looking for foreign brides have had no luck attracting a mate at home.
While many of Asia's foreign brides have Asian husbands, a survey by Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Board found German and Swiss men were among the top of the list of foreigners marrying women from the kingdom's poor northeastern Issan farming region.
The state-run think-tank found that Issan women account for almost half of the kingdom's international marriages. It said the women sought foreign husbands because Thai women believe the foreign men will take care of their families, giving them big houses and luxury items.
Thai women believe that Thai men, on the other hand, drink and gamble too much and do not care for their families, the survey found.
Gambling helped spell the end of Chung's marriage in Hong Kong. After their initial happiness together, her husband became a gambling addict, an alcoholic and kept mistresses in China. He could not hold onto regular work, and the financial strain forced Chung to work three jobs. She said they did not make enough money, and yet, he did not like the fact that she earned more than him.
"His ego was hurt and he started releasing his anger on me," Chung said, wiping away tears.
For the next 10 years, he would hit her with anything he could get his hands on.
"One time we had an argument. He wanted us to pack our things in 15 minutes and leave. He told us, `If you don't, I'll stab you to death."' That was seven years ago, the last time she saw him.
Margaret Wong, executive director of Harmony House, a women's shelter, said Chung's case is typical among cross-cultural marriages in Hong Kong. Official figures point to an alarming rise in domestic violence last year, when cases surged 80 percent over the previous year to reach 4,700.
Flora Chung thought she had a pretty happy life. She owned a successful fashion business in southern China and had a loving husband from Hong Kong.
The couple met in Guangzhou, her hometown. They hit it off, and were married not long after.
"He was very good to me. He used to come and see me and take me out all the time. When I was pregnant, he would do all the housework at home," said Chung, who sold her business cheaply and moved to Hong Kong to be with her husband - a decision she would later regret. "I was surprised how quickly a person could change."
Asia's wedding bells are increasingly sounding a cross-cultural tone as men and women look outside their own borders for partners.
While some couples find the love, happiness and security they are searching for, others discover that language and cultural barriers threaten their dream of wedded bliss.
In the worst cases, cross-border wives like Chung fall victim to physically abusive partners.
"Many foreign brides are simply regarded as tools for bearing children for their husbands," said Lu Hui-chuan, a social worker with Taiwan's nonprofit Eden Social Welfare Foundation.
In impoverished Cambodia, which lacks a professional law enforcement apparatus and an established system for brokered international marriages, women's advocates warn it is easier than elsewhere for prospective brides to fall victim to abuse.
"I thought my future would be bright after I went to Taiwan as a bride," said Bopha, 18, a rice farmer from Cambodia's rural Svay Rieng province near the border with Vietnam.
Promises of love were enough to persuade her to move to Taiwan and marry a restaurant owner.
She met her husband for the first time when he arrived with a marriage broker at her village hut. The broker told her family that he was a rich bachelor who lived alone in a modern country.
After arriving in Taiwan she discovered she was the man's second wife. He forbade her from leaving the house, where she cared for an elderly woman claiming to be her mother-in-law.
"I was not a wife of a rich Taiwanese man, I was a housekeeper with no salary," Bopha said. "It was hell. I can't imagine how I could live in that situation."
A Taiwanese group and the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre later freed her.
Mu Sochua, formerly Cambodia's minister of women's and veterans' affairs, said extreme poverty is driving more women to marry foreigners.
"She doesn't know clearly about the groom's background and he can be any size or age - just as long as he whisks her to live and work in the second country," Mu Sochua said.
Taiwan has become one of Asia's major destinations for foreign spouses. Most come from China and its territories, a fact which gives Taiwan's cross-cultural marriages the added burden of being tied into the island's delicate politics. Wives from the mainland complain of discrimination because of the hostility between Taipei and Beijing. The island has received more than 380,000 foreign spouses over the past 20 years, more than 65 percent of them from Hong Kong, Macau and the mainland, according to interior ministry figures.
According to Taiwan law, women from China are eligible to apply for local identity cards only after they stay for a minimum of eight years, compared with three years for women from other countries. "I don't know why we women from the mainland are being treated in such an unfair way. Also because of my accent, I was regarded as a second-class citizen. The feeling is uncomfortable," said Cui Xiaoling, a native of central China who married a Taiwanese six years ago.
Taiwan's immigration authorities say the strict law is aimed at deterring rampant false marriages, largely for purposes of prostitution.
But mainland brides are not the only ones who have trouble adjusting to life in Taiwan.
In a disturbing case, Taipei prosecutors said Friday they would seek the death penalty for a man who conspired with his brother to murder the latter's Vietnamese wife to claim on her insurance policy. Lee Tai-an and Lee Shuang-chuan were suspected of sabotaging rail tracks in March last year to cause the derailment of a train that Shuang- chuan's wife, Chen Hong-chen, was on. While she was in hospital recovering from the accident, her husband murdered her with a injection of snake poison, the prosecutors said.
They said that five years earlier, Lee Shuang- chuan - who committed suicide within days of the train crash - had lost his second wife, also a Vietnamese, after she was allegedly bitten by a snake. He claimed US$161,000 (HK$1.26 million) in insurance.
Official figures say 19.8 percent of Taiwan's foreign spouses are from Vietnam. Another 6.8 percent come from Indonesia, 2.46 percent from Thailand, 1.59 percent from the Philippines and 1.18 percent from Cambodia.
There is also strong demand for Vietnamese and Cambodian brides in Singapore, said Martin Wong, Singapore managing director for Mr Cupid International Matchmakers, one of many agencies that help arrange foreign brides for bachelors in the wealthy, majority ethnic-Chinese city state.
To boost demand for women from Fujian province, the agency offered a special Lunar New Year discount for grooms who committed to marry a Fujianese woman, Wong said.
In many cases, men looking for foreign brides have had no luck attracting a mate at home.
While many of Asia's foreign brides have Asian husbands, a survey by Thailand's National Economic and Social Development Board found German and Swiss men were among the top of the list of foreigners marrying women from the kingdom's poor northeastern Issan farming region.
The state-run think-tank found that Issan women account for almost half of the kingdom's international marriages. It said the women sought foreign husbands because Thai women believe the foreign men will take care of their families, giving them big houses and luxury items.
Thai women believe that Thai men, on the other hand, drink and gamble too much and do not care for their families, the survey found.
Gambling helped spell the end of Chung's marriage in Hong Kong. After their initial happiness together, her husband became a gambling addict, an alcoholic and kept mistresses in China. He could not hold onto regular work, and the financial strain forced Chung to work three jobs. She said they did not make enough money, and yet, he did not like the fact that she earned more than him.
"His ego was hurt and he started releasing his anger on me," Chung said, wiping away tears.
For the next 10 years, he would hit her with anything he could get his hands on.
"One time we had an argument. He wanted us to pack our things in 15 minutes and leave. He told us, `If you don't, I'll stab you to death."' That was seven years ago, the last time she saw him.
Margaret Wong, executive director of Harmony House, a women's shelter, said Chung's case is typical among cross-cultural marriages in Hong Kong. Official figures point to an alarming rise in domestic violence last year, when cases surged 80 percent over the previous year to reach 4,700.
2 comments:
This matter caused by one eye Hun Shit who had governed the country for so loooong.
THE CASE STUDY:
A PATIENT DIED A WEEK LATER AFTER AMITTING TO A HOSPITAL. THE FAMILY WAS SUING THE HOSPITAL AND A DOCTOR FOR MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE.
THE COURT HAD DIMISSED THAT LAWSUIT.
THE PATIENT HAS BEEN SUFFERED FROM TERMINAL LIVER CIRRHOSIS AND BACTRIA RESITANCE PNUEMONIA. THE FAMILY KEPT THIS ELDER 63 YEARS OLD AT HOME AND TREATED WITH A TRADITIONAL MEDICATION UNTIL THE PATIENT WAS RUNNNING FEVER AT 103 F (ABOUT 42 C.)FOR DAYS BEFORE DECIDING TO CALL 911 TO TRANSFER HIM TO THE HOSPITAL.
THE FAMILY BELIEVE THAT MEDICAL DOCTOR IS A LIVING GOD WHO CAN HEAL EVERY PROBLEM/DISEASE OR THEY CAN BE BLAMED.
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