Pakistan: Hundreds of young women from Pakistan’s small Christian minority have been trafficked to China as brides in recent months. Marriage brokers are seeking out girls, mostly Christians who are among the minorities in Pakistan, for Chinese men, from outside churches, with support from Christian clerics who are paid to target downtrodden parents with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.

also read: A Company sells Donald Trump toilet papers, know price and other details

Brokers offer desperately poor parents thousands of dollars to give girls in marriage to Chinese men, even cruising outside churches for potential brides. They are helped by Christian pastors paid to preach to their congregations with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.

The issue came to light after a girl (Muqadas Ashraf) fled China and returned to Pakistan, pregnant and with allegations that she was being abused by her husband. Muqadas Ashraf was just 16 when her parents married her off to a Chinese man who had come to Pakistan looking for a bride. Less than five months later, Muqadas is back in her home country, pregnant and seeking a divorce from a husband she says was abusive. “It is all fraud and cheating. All the promises they make are fake,” said Muqadas Ashraf.

“This is human smuggling,” said Ijaz Alam Augustine, the human rights and minorities minister in Pakistan’s Punjab province, in an interview with the AP. “Greed is really responsible for these marriages … I have met with some of these girls and they are very poor.”

The Christian community in Pakistan falls in minorities and is populated mostly in the Punjab province, which makes them vulnerable. Christians are the most impoverished community in Pakistan, with very little political or social support.

also read: World Asthma Day 2019: Here is best way to Cure chronic condition of breathing