hen Lee had just given birth, she saw a Chinese man peering desperately through the window to her Phnom Penh hospital room. Security would not let him enter. But as nine months ago the man had agreed to pay the 24-year-old $10,000 to be a surrogate, the boy in her arms was biologically his.





In June, authorities arrested her and 31 other pregnant surrogates, detaining them in a police hospital.





Lee spent five months there. During labour, she was twice chained to her bed. Nor did her release come easy.





To avoid up to 15 years in prison, the illiterate villager agreed to raise the child on her own.





On Wednesday, like the 31 other surrogates, she stamped her thumbprint onto a document acknowledging that she would be arrested if she ever sent the child to the couple that paid for it - and Cambodia’s National Committee of Anti-Human Trafficking let her go.





The Chinese father is unlikely to see his child again.

The case highlights the impact of Cambodia's announcement earlier this year that surrogates who sold babies overseas could be charged under human trafficking laws, a response to a surge in cases following a ban on the trade in neighbouring Thailand.



