Cambodia bans marriage to foreigners
April 3, 2008
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.
[...]
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.
April 4, 2008 at 9:40 am
[...] From DAS: Cambodia bans marriage to foreigners [...]
April 5, 2008 at 6:02 am
Americans call these kind of marrages, “Mail Order Brides”. In most instances, marriages of this kind very seldom work. And for good reason: They don’t speak the same language and have a completely different culture.
While there is a ‘temporary’ ban on ‘foreign’ marriages of Cambodians, I vote to give the Cambodian Government a chance to get their head around this issue. I am impressed thay have taken the time to look into the issue in the first place. There are after all some related under-belly issues that are of concern: Slavery, forced prostitution, general abusivness and Cambodian land ownership.
Where I have witnessed success in this type arrangement has been where both people have the common thread of high mutual dependance in a somewhat familiar, small scale, agricultural lifestyle.
“You mean, I can use a tractor in the fields instead of an animal, cool!”
April 6, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Exactly: … evaluate each marriage application based on its merits.
I am white, my fiancee has brown skin. I love her, she loves me. She is financially independent, and so am I. We ought to be able to get married, no?
How many Cambodian-Cambodian (or any other country) marriages are based on money, status or abuse? Shouldn’t they ban ALL marriages then?
April 7, 2008 at 1:42 pm
“There are after all some related under-belly issues that are of concern: Slavery, forced prostitution, general abusivness and Cambodian land ownership.”
There’s a few knee-jerk assumptions at work here. In the original article (whose source I’ve forgotten) the case studies highlighted how the young Cambodian women married purely for money and abandoned their Korean husbands when they realised that their financial expectations were not being met. No cases of ‘abuse’ on the husbands’ side were mentioned.
To my mind, there are two main issues to be addressed here - one is unreasonable expectations on BOTH sides; the other is the role of ‘brokers’ who are in the business for their own profit-margins. I hope the government is looking into clamping down on the latter; some ‘all men are bastards’ agenda is of no help to anyone in this scenario.
April 8, 2008 at 9:07 am
Domestic violence is a very real problem:
“The deaths of several Vietnamese wives in South Korea in 2007 and early 2008 due to mistreatment by their South Korean husbands have already raised hard questions about the trade in Vietnam. One case that made headlines in both Vietnam and Cambodia involved the death of Tran Thanh Lan, a purchased bride who jumped or fell from her 14th floor balcony after only six weeks of marriage in South Korea. Her mother recently went to the country to demand an inquiry into her daughter’s death… Abuse against Cambodian brides has also been reported and some have ended up running away from bad marriages. The 2007 US Trafficking in Persons Report said, ‘NGOs [non-governmental organizations] are reporting cases of foreign women placed in conditions of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor by fake ‘husbands’ who work for trafficking rings or exploitative husbands who feel they ‘own’ the woman and can use her as a farm hand or domestic worker.’”
URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JD08Ae01.html
April 16, 2008 at 8:33 am
Damn, it is completely bad. Cambodia Government should ban only country which cause the bad thing not all.
My wife is Cambodian and now, it is sucks!
April 22, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Marriage could be match all over the world. They don’t think about skin color, races, languages, cultures or lifestyles. For example, if I am American and I wanna marry Cambodian woman who doesn’t speak English, it is ok. She can learn English and also can learn Khmer. It’s not too hard to learn. We also can learn from each other, how to understand,how to live, how to pratice in culture or in lifestyle, ect…The Royal Government has no right to ban Marriage at all because it is UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT. They have to ban only the case which does not follow the rules both concerned countries. If they ban Marriage for all foriegn contries, that means the Royal Government of Cambodia does not realy know how to process their jobs or they do not know exactly how to run their country. In my opinion, the Royal Government should think over and over again about that issue.
May 2, 2008 at 3:59 pm
First it was the adultery law, then now a surprise ban on foreign marriage..when is this government going to sit up and be matured in handling problems. Or maybe the marriage department does not know what to do or too lazy to think about this situation…but i think most likely its the holiday season and most government officials are on their long long holiday…u know Khmer new year, kings birthday (3days actually10 days) …no wonder nobody is responsible to deal with minor issue like a few Khmer women who get into badly arranged marriage to some bad Koreans. Hmm could this be indirectly linked with the recent cases of Korean property scams…maybe some officials got burn in the property scam so they take it out on the Korean community or since they are at it, why not all foreigners… Anyways i find it all so funny how the government in cambodia run the country…sometimes i wonder if there’s a working government at all. If anything happens, the next thing is BAN! Ban this ban that and after the dust settle all is forgotten. Does anybody remember the ban on discos,karaokes….who un-ban them?. What about Banning 3G phone…did they find a way to block porn from circulating…how about ban on adultery…well that ban has served its political purpose, I guess its not a hot topic anymore. What will they think of next? BAN on condoms? Wait a minute I think they ban that already when they ban PSI commercial…hmm. BAN ALL! B.A.N. in cambodia actually means Banning All Nonsense!