Antislavery Usable Past

Cho Cho

2012 (Narrative date)

The internal migration of Chinese people seeking work has created an opportunity for human traffickers in China. Moreover the gender imbalance caused by the One Child Policy and the cultural preference for male children, has caused a shortage of women which has led to the trafficking of women to be sold as brides. As a result many women find themselves either deceived by promises of employment, sold or abducted and forced into marrying Chinese men who have paid for them. Women and girls are kidnapped or recruited through marriage brokers and transported to China from Africa, Asia and North Korea where some are subjected to commercial sex or forced labor.

Cho Cho, who was 18 and married, was selling the betel nut chew so popular with Burmese men when a man from her neighborhood approached her with the promise of a job in Mandalay. However, instead of a job, Cho Cho found herself on a truck bound for China and upon arrival, was sold to a Chinese man to be married. After refusing to marry the man that bought her, Cho Cho was forced to work as a labourer. She was finally able to escape to the police who deported her back to Burma.

https://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/trafficking-11302012172957.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=Human+Trafficking

It was after the monks’ revolution in 2007 and there was a curfew. I couldn’t do business. It was a bad economic situation.

I told them I wanted to go home, But they said they wanted $250 as a ‘refund.’ I had no money.

[Cho Cho, with a husband at home, refused to be married to the man who bought her]

He locked me in a room and beat me with his hands and sticks, Then he took me by the hair and beat my head against the brick wall… That was the worst part, to be beaten again and again.

[Cho Cho’s beatings stopped only after she agreed to work as a laborer in the farmer’s fields]

[Alone one morning, she walked away and fled to a police station in a nearby town. Instead of taking her back to her owner, as they sometimes do, the police held her for three months as an illegal alien and then deported her to Burma]

I told my husband everything when I got home, and he accepted me back, The scars are gone. No more scars…(but) I’m still heartbroken telling this story

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2007 (Enslavement period)

VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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