'Sold by my brother': The Mekong woman pressed into marriage in China
Unheard plight
AFP
Family traitor
Brokers split the remaining $7,000 paid by her Chinese husband, who got himself a longed-for heir.
But her wedding to a stranger thousands of miles from home, in a language she could not understand, was ill-fated from the start.
AFP
Filling the gap
While the policy has ended, a shortfall of around 33 million women has left the same number of men facing life on the shelf.
AFP
Underlying reason
Others move for work but end up forced into marriage. The worst cases involve kidnapping and trafficking across porous borders.
AFP
Broken trust
"I trusted him," Nary said in a whisper, as rain drove through holes in the tin roof of her family's roadside shack outside Phnom Penh.
"My family is poor and I was expected to help them by marrying a Chinese man. So I went."
But her brother stole the dowry that was meant to help the whole family and has since vanished.
AFP
How much to shell out
A 'dowry' of between $1,000 and $3,000 is dangled in front of the bride's family, while the young woman herself is last in the money chain, if she receives anything at all.
In Cambodia, brokers and other third parties can be jailed for up to 15 years if caught, longer if the victim is a minor.
But convictions are rare, with brokers paying up to $5,000 to buy victims' silence.
Reuters
Longing for a sight
"She wouldn't let me see him or even hold him," she said. The family pushed for divorce, but with an expired visa Nary knew that leaving the home would make her presence illegal in China.
Eventually she moved out and found a low-paid job for a few years in a nearby glass factory. But her immigration status caught up with her and she was held in a detention centre for a year with scores of Vietnamese and Cambodian women, all with similar tales.
After her release, her mother reached out to a Cambodian charity who engineered her return in August this year.
Now she works for minimum wage in a garment factory, free from a bad marriage, but separated from her child.
"I know I will never see him again," she says.
AFP
