Slave husbands of Hong Kong: the men who marry into servitude
Vulnerable men from India and Pakistan are being tricked into arranged marriages and trafficked to Hong Kong where they work as bonded labourers and indentured servants for their in-laws, too afraid or ashamed to speak out
Shahid Sandhu’s sense of loss and anxiety from his loveless marriage knows no bounds. But his is more than a bad connection.
From the time he left Pakistan to join his new wife overseas four years ago, she, her brothers and her parents have been controlling his every move.
They force him to work round the clock, seven days a week – as a bonded labourer at a construction site during the day and as an indentured servant at home on evenings and his day off. They beat him and verbally abuse him at any sign of exhaustion or dissent. They take all his money, refuse him food and have even threatened to kill him.
Sandhu knows what they are doing is wrong and illegal, but the endless abuse has broken him down. He battles severe depression and nightmares, too exhausted, afraid and ashamed to speak out.
Sandhu’s situation sounds as if it’s from a bygone era, but it is happening today, in one of the world’s most advanced cities: Hong Kong. And his plight is not unique.
Lawyers and NGO outreach workers in the city’s South Asian community say Sandhu is just one of dozens of known cases in which men have been tricked into arranged marriages before being trafficked to Hong Kong and forced into indentured labour by their bride’s family.
Typically, the men are preyed upon by future in-laws who select them for their vulnerability and promise them first-world lives that will enable them to support loved ones back home.
