The baby wasn’t his, not really. When Hun Daneth gave birth to the child, who did not look like her, it became even clearer to her.
But four years after acting as a surrogate mother for a Chinese businessman who said he used a Russian egg donor, Hun Daneth is being ordered by Cambodian courts to raise the child or risk jail time.
The businessman is in prison for surrogacy, and his appeal was denied in June.
Even as she dealt with the shock of raising the baby, Hun Daneth diligently changed her diapers. Over the years, she has come to see this child as her own.
“I love him so much,” said Hun Daneth, who cares for the boy with her husband.
The fates of a Cambodian woman, a Chinese man, and the child that links them reflect the ethical dilemmas of the global surrogacy industry. The practice is legal and often prohibitively expensive in some countries, while others have outlawed it. Still other nations with weak legal systems, such as Cambodia, have allowed gray markets to operate, endangering those involved as political conditions change.
When done with safeguards, supporters say, commercial surrogacy allows people to extend their families while fairly compensating women who give birth.
Done poorly, the process can lead to the abuse of vulnerable people. Cambodia became a popular surrogacy destination after crackdowns on other Asian countries were imposed nearly a decade ago. Foreigners flocked to new fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies in Phnom Penh, the capital.
As the industry grew, the government imposed a ban, promising to pass a law officially banning surrogacy. The ill-defined injunction ended up punishing the women the government had promised to safeguard.
In 2018, Hun Daneth was one of 30 pregnant surrogate mothers caught up in a police raid in Phnom Penh. With no law limiting surrogacy, the government criminalized the practice using existing laws against human trafficking, a crime that can carry a 20-year sentence.
“Surrogacy means that women are willing to sell babies and that counts as trafficking,” said Chou Bun Eng, secretary of state for the Home Ministry and vice chairman of the National Anti-Trafficking Committee. “We don’t want Cambodia to be known as a place that produces babies for sale.”
Nearly all those arrested in the 2018 raid gave birth while incarcerated in a military hospital, some chained to their beds. They, along with several surrogacy agency employees, were found guilty of baby trafficking.
Their sentences, two years later, came with one condition: In exchange for suspended prison terms, the surrogate mothers would have to raise the children.
This means that women whose financial precariousness led them to surrogacy now struggle with one more mouth to feed. Potential parents are separated from their children. And surrogacy has been relegated to the shadows in Cambodia.
From behind bars in a courthouse in Phnom Penh, Xu Wenjun, the future father of the child Hun Daneth gave birth to, spoke before police intervened. He has been in prison for three years. “My son must be big by now,” Xu said. “Do you think he remembers me?”
Hun Daneth, who is now 25 years old, became a surrogate mother due to debts. In recent years, Cambodian households have become some of the most indebted in the world, victims of a microfinance crisis.
Like nearly a million Cambodians, she had left the countryside to sew garments in factories. But a couple hundred dollars a month doesn’t go a long way in the cities.
An agent at the factory where Hun Daneth worked told her she could earn $9,000, about five times her annual base salary, as a surrogate.
The agent was connected to an agency run locally by a Chinese man and his Cambodian wife.
Xu, from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, was tied with Hun Daneth. The only thing missing, he told friends of his who spoke to The New York Times, was a son to continue the family line.
In his testimony in court, Xu said his wife could not have a child. But Xu’s friends, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had no wife and was open about his homosexuality. LGBTQ couples are not allowed to adopt in China, and most countries where surrogacy is legal exclude gay or single people from the practice.
Perfect Fertility Center, or PFC, a surrogacy agency registered in the British Virgin Islands, was sympathetic to potential LGBTQ parents.
Tony Yu, founder of PFC, said he was assured by Cambodian lawyers that his agency was legal. Yu partnered with a fertility clinic in Phnom Penh.
In 2017, Xu signed a contract with PFC and agreed to pay $75,000, according to documents reviewed by The Times. Xu said the egg donor was a Russian model.
Yu said many of the agency’s egg donors came from Russia, Ukraine and South Africa. The intended parents were Chinese and many were gay.
For surrogate mothers, being forced to raise children of other ethnicities can create tensions in their families and communities.
“People ask, ‘Why does he have brown hair? Where did he come from?’” said Vin Win, 22, another surrogate arrested with Hun Daneth.
Vin Win’s husband resents the son she gave birth to, she said. They have separated. “I look at my son and feel sorry because I think he should live in a nice place,” Vin Win said. “This is not his real home.”
The July 2018 raid followed a region-wide crackdown. Three years ago, Thailand banned commercial surrogacy for foreigners, shutting down a cheaper alternative to surrogacy in the West, which can cost upwards of $150,000.
Fertility clinics in Thailand have moved across the border to Cambodia. A senior ruling party official questioned whether foreigners should pay to have access to Cambodian women.
In late 2016, the Cambodian Ministry of Health announced a ban on surrogacy without adopting new legislation. Fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies continued to open. The searches began the following year. Yu said that she had no idea that her agency was breaking any laws.
“I wanted to do everything legally and openly,” Yu said. “With Lotus Fertility fertility clinic, everyone said, ‘Everything is safe, everything is comfortable, they have a good track record,’ so I believed them,” she said. “But then a disaster happened,” she added.
Hun Daneth said he felt he shouldn’t talk openly about what he was doing. In the documents of Xu’s payment to PFC’s bank account, an addendum warns: “Do not use surrogacy-related words when transferring money.”
A Lotus Fertility employee, who agreed to speak only if her name was not used, said the clinic submitted documentation indicating that all IVFs were for potential Cambodian mothers, although it was clear many of the women were surrogate mothers.
Lotus Fertility has closed. A representative blamed the coronavirus for the shutdown.
After Yu, he says, paid the police nearly $150,000, the surrogate mothers were released. In total, Yu said, she spent more than $740,000 trying to fix the situation, paid in cash to middlemen or anonymous bank accounts.
Chhay Kimkhoeun, a spokesman for the Cambodian National Police, disputed Yu’s claim. “First, is there any evidence for what is being said?” he asked. “Second, if there is factual evidence, they can file a complaint.”
Some surrogates said that they also had to be reporting to the police station. “It was like we were criminals,” said Ry Ly, another surrogate. “Our babies are the crime.”
Most women are struggling financially. Despite the surrogate mothers’ promises to the court that they would raise the babies, a good number of children are no longer in Cambodia and have been reunited with their Chinese parents, Yu said.
Xu, the businessman who is now in jail, went to Cambodia to try to get his son out. He contacted Hun Daneth directly. He submitted a paternity test to the Chinese Embassy in Phnom Penh and in 2019 obtained a passport for the child.
A worker from a Christian charity, founded by Americans to combat child sex trafficking and which works with the Cambodian government, accompanied Xu to the police station to finish the paperwork. Policemen were waiting. He has been incarcerated ever since.
Representatives for the charity Agape International Missions declined to comment.
In 2020, Xu was convicted of human trafficking and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In June, his appeal was denied.
“Are they serious that he is trafficking his own son?” said May Vannady, Xu’s lawyer.
May Vannady says they will take their appeal to the Supreme Court. Chou Bun Eng of the government’s anti-trafficking committee said the sentence should be upheld. She suggested that Chinese gangs wanted to harvest organs from children born to Cambodian surrogates.
Xu meant no harm, Hun Daneth told the appeals court judge. He only wanted a son.
Still, he told the court, he had grown fond of the boy. After the hearing, Hun Daneth said that he had decided to return to the camp because he did not want anyone to kidnap him. He didn’t like it when Chinese-speaking people showed up at his house. “No one will take it from me,” he said. “It’s mine”.
By: Hannah Beech
Phnom Penh (Cambodia)
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6497150, IMPORTING DATE: 2022-12-16 16:30:06
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