Bringing her two children from Taiwan to Vietnam, Thuy left her children with
her mother in the southern province of
Soc Trang and went to HCM City
to work.

Thuy, from An Thanh Nhat commune, Cu Lao Dung district, Soc
Trang province; got married with a Taiwanese man and went to Taiwan with her
husband. Four years ago, her husband died of fatal disease. Her mother-in-law
and son-in-law cast out Thuy and her two children to appropriate her husband’s
assets.

With bared hands, Thuy borrowed some money from her friends
in Taiwan to buy air tickets
to return to Vietnam.
However, her mother was very poor and suffered from lung disease. One night,
Thuy quietly left her children with her mother and went to HCM City
to work.

Thuy’s mother, Mrs. Cam, said that for the past four years,
Thuy’s husband family has never gone to Vietnam to visit the kids. Thuy
only returned home twice a year to visit the children. Sometimes Thuy sent
money to her mother to bring up the children.

When they were brought to Vietnam four years ago, the two
children, Lin Yi Syun and Lin Shan Tai, couldn’t speak Vietnamese. They are now
5-6 years old and can speak Vietnamese very well. The kids don’t remember much
about their parents.

There are some villages in the Soc Trang province which are
called “Taiwan
village”, because many girls in these villages are married to Taiwanese.

According to the local authorities, over 7,000 women in Soc
Trang got married with foreigners, 70 percent with Taiwanese. In Cu Lao Dung
district, there are over 400 girls in An Thanh Nhat alone, getting married with
Taiwanese. Many of them were not happy in marriage due to language hindrances,
conflicts with their husband and husband’s families, being beaten by their
husbands and husband families, have escaped to Vietnam. Hundreds of mixed-blood
children followed their mothers back to Vietnam.

Living far from their parents, but perhaps Thuy’s two
children have a better life than a little girl named Nhu Y, in Long Hau
commune, Lai Vung district, in the southern province of Dong Thap.

Living with her mother, the little girl was maltreated by
her mother when the she was only nine months old. The mother is Nguyen Thi Xuan
Lan, 29, who married a Taiwanese nine years ago. Being maltreated by her
husband’s family, Lan left her husband’s home to work at a factory and lived
with another Taiwanese man. In early 2009, she was pregnant and returned to Vietnam. After
having a child, Nhu Y, lived with a man. Last August, the couple was arrested
for beating the kid.

Not only mixed-blood children are victims of marriages
between Vietnamese rural girls and foreign men, Vietnamese brides are victims.

A woman named Le Thi Kim Dong from Thoi Hung commune, Co Do
district, Can Tho city, married a Korean man and followed her husband to South Korea,
where she was maltreated by her husband. In April 2007, Dong tried to escape
from her husband’s apartment by a door curtain. She fell from the balcony of
the 9^th floor and died after several days.

Last July, Thach Thi Hong Ngoc, 21, also from Co Do
district, Can Tho city, was stabbed to death by her mental-ill husband just a
week after she arrived in South
Korea.

After sad stories of Vietnamese women who got married with
foreigners to change their lives were reported on the local media, the movement
to get married with foreign men has reduced in the southwestern region.
However, the movement has recently spread in some northern provinces like Hai Duong, Hai Phong
and Lang Son.

According to the Ministry of Labor, War invalids and Social
Affairs, over 257,000 Vietnamese got married with foreigners or overseas
Vietnamese from 2005 to 2010. However, the Ministry of Justice said that the
figure is over 294,000. Most of them are Vietnamese women who got married with
Taiwanese and Korean men.

PV