DHAKA: When Kiab turned 16, her brother promised to take her to a party in a tourist town in northern Vietnam. Instead, he sold her to a Chinese family as a bride.

The ethnic Hmong teenager spent nearly a month in China until she was able to escape her new husband, seek help from local police and return to Vietnam.

‘My brother is no longer a human being in my eyes, he sold his own sister to China,’ Kiab, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told media at a shelter for trafficking victims in the Vietnamese border town Lao Cai.

Vulnerable women in countries close to China, not only Vietnam but also North Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, are being forced into marriages in the land of the one-child policy, experts say, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1258 HRS, JUNE 25, 2014