According to a very troubling revelation made by a top US diplomat for religious freedom, Ambassador-at-Large Samuel Brownback, Hindu and Christian women in Pakistan are being ‘marketed’ as ‘concubines’ under the pretext of marrying them to wealthy Chinese men.

Brownback told reporters on Tuesday (December 10) that Pakistan is selling girls who belong to the religious minorities as “forced brides” for Chinese men. Christians and Hindus are a minority in Pakistan and often targets of majority Sunni Muslims and Hindu and Christian girls are an easy target to be sold as concubines or as brides into China.

Hindu and Christian women from poor and marginalized communities in Pakistan are vulnerable to traffickers falsely promising marriage to wealthy Chinese men. Once married in China, these women are often isolated, neglected, abused and, at times, sold as prostitutes.

— US Ambassador at Large for Int'l Religious Freedom (@IRF_Ambassador) December 8, 2020

Due to years of the one-child policy imposed by China, there is an acute imbalance in the sex ratio and given the cultural preference for a male child, many Chinese couples would either have undergone abortion or simply abandoned the girl child after giving birth.

This skewed sex ration has led to Chinese men importing women from other countries as brides, mistresses and labourers. As per Brownback, “Once married in China, these women are often isolated, neglected, abused and, at times, sold as prostitutes.”

According to Brownback, this was happening “because there’s not effective support and there’s discrimination against religious minorities that make them more vulnerable.

In November of this year, Ambassador-at-Large Brownback also spoke about the plight of Ahmadi Muslims and raised concern on Pakistan “because of the harshness of the persecution atmosphere and the number of people getting killed or the inability for the Ahmadi Muslims to function in the country, because they – the Pakistanis won’t let them register as Muslims.”

And it is not just Hindus or Christians, even poor Muslim woman in Pakistan are lured in to the Chinese trap.

The New York Times in November 2019 had covered a story of one Rabia Kanwal who was married to a Chinese man. Rabia was married to Zhang Shuchen who she thought was a wealthy farmer in China. He had paid $14,500 to a Chinese broker in the hopes of bringing home a Pakistani bride. He had told Rabia’s family that he was Muslim and used Chinese-Urdu dictionary to communicate and strike a bond with the family. After the marriage, Zhang had taken her to China. His house was located in the Henan province. The girl upon reaching was shocked to find that the man turned out to be duck farmer with not even a toilet at his home. The report notes that at least 150 women were brought to China as brides under false pretenses and in some cases were forced into prostitution.

He mentioned this as one of the reasons for designating Pakistan as a country of particular concern (CPC) under the International Religious Freedom Act.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) had also recommended placing India also on the CPC, citing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the recommendation to designate India as a violator of freedom of religion on Monday (December 7).

Brownback, however, said that Washington was watching the Indian situation closely and “these issues have been raised in private discussions at the government, high government level, and they will continue to get raised”.

The main issue of contention is that CAA expedites citizenship for Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and Sikhs fleeing religious persecution in neighbouring Islamic or Muslim majority countries. However, the laws also do not prevent Muslims from getting citizenship after following the usual procedures.

Brownback reservations are in fact quite unfounded as the US has a legal provision similar to the CAA which is known as the Specter Amendment. This law allows individuals to get asylum and there is a sizeable budget tucked into this bill to help non-Muslim minorities from Iran and other no Christian countries, while pointedly excluding Muslim.

When he was asked why Pakistan is on the CPC list and if there is a double standard in Pompeo giving not giving the same designation to India, Brownback said, “Pakistan has half of the world’s people that are locked up for apostasy or blasphemy,”.

The countries that are on CPC in addition to Pakistan are China, Myanmar Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.