Kathy Gannon, correspondent, Islamabad, and Beijing staffers Dake Kang, multimedia journalist, and Shansan Wang, news assistant, for an excellent example of cross-regional cooperation that uncovered how Pakistan’s poor Christian population has become a new target in China’s market for foreign brides, leading to hundreds of girls being trafficked to China – a trade that has not been previously reported in international media. In the slums around Punjab, Gannon immersed herself in Pakistan’s Christian community, meeting a dozen brides and girls, and finding brokers and local priests complicit in the trade. Kang, meanwhile, worked the China side. With Wang’s help he eventually tracked down one husband in a small village, providing the other side of the story. The result was the first story on the subject beyond small stories in Pakistani media that didn’t capture the full scope of the trade.
AP reveals: Pakistani Christian girls trafficked to China as brides
Mahek Liaqat, 19, who married a Chinese national, shows her marriage certificate in Gujranwala, Pakistan, April 14, 2019. Poor Pakistani Christian girls are being lured into marriages with Chinese men, whom they are told are Christian and wealthy, only to end up trapped in China, married to men who are neither Christian nor well-to-do. Some of the girls are unable to return home.
AP Photo / K.M. Chaudary