Sold to China as a bride, she came home on brink of death

In this April 14, 2019 photo, Pakistani Christian woman Samiya David talks to the Associated Press, in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Samiya had been in China just two months when her brother got a phone call telling him to pick her up at the airport. When he arrived, he found Samiya in a wheelchair, malnourished and too weak to walk, said her cousin Pervaiz Masih. She died barely five weeks later. Masih was among the relatives who prepared Samiya's grave and attended her burial in May. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary) In this April 14, 2019 photo, Pakistani Christian woman Samiya David talks to the Associated Press, in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Samiya had been in China just two months when her brother got a phone call telling him to pick her up at the airport. When he arrived, he found Samiya in a wheelchair, malnourished and too weak to walk, said her cousin Pervaiz Masih. She died barely five weeks later. Masih was among the relatives who prepared Samiya's grave and attended her burial in May. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

By KATHY GANNON / The Associated Press December 12, 2019 7 min read

MAZAIKEWALE, Pakistan (AP) – Sold by her family as a bride to a Chinese man, Samiya David spent only two months in China. When she returned to Pakistan, the once robust woman was nearly unrecognizable: malnourished, too weak to walk, her speech confused and disjointed.

“Don’t ask me about what happened to me there” was her only reply to her family’s questions, her cousin Pervaiz Masih said.

Within just a few weeks, she was dead.

David’s mysterious death adds to a growing body of evidence of mistreatment and abuses against Pakistani women and girls, mainly Christians, who have been trafficked to China as brides.

AP investigations have found that traffickers have increasingly targeted Pakistan’s impoverished Christian population over the past two years, paying desperate families to give their daughters and sisters, some of them teenagers, into marriage with Chinese men. Once in China, the women are often isolated, neglected, abused and sold into prostitution, frequently contacting home to plead to be brought back. Some women have told The Associated Press and activists that their husbands at times refused to feed them.