Cambodia bans marriage to foreigners

Earlier in the week South Korea stopped issuing resident visas to Cambodians marrying nationals from that country. Today, concerned by the recent surge in Korean-Khmer weddings, the Cambodian government has banned Cambodians marrying all foreigners.

Cambodia has suspended marriages between foreigners and Cambodians amid concerns over an explosion in the number of brokered unions involving poor, uneducated women, an official said Thursday.

The move follows an International Organisation for Migration (IOM) report highlighting the plight of an increasing number of Cambodian brides migrating to South Korea in marriages hastily arranged by brokers who make large profits.

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While no systematic exploitation was uncovered, several cases of abuse did raise a red flag with the government, said You Ay, secretary of state with the Women’s Affairs Ministry.

“Seven women have returned from South Korea because they could not stand what happened to them there,” You Ay told AFP.

On one hand this seems like a prudent move. Yet on the other, it also seems like a gross violation of people’s basic human rights. Who is the government to say who can and cannot marry? In most of the rest of the world, the mere insinuation that people from Country X were banned by their government from marrying outside their race would be an outrage.

The government should do its job: evaluate each marriage application based on its merits — not ban marriages across the board. Banning marriages outright is not just lazy and inept, it’s probably criminal.

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