The extremely sad and abused fate of a Cambodian beggar child in Thailand

Thai Police questioning the alleged mother of the young beggar girl. In most cases, the alleged mother is not the real mother, but only a person who would rent or buy a child from Cambodia and bring the child to beg in Thailand while pocketing the money for herself.

A distraught little Bo. The cell phone around Bo's neck is for the alleged mother to call in and check how much money the 4-year-old girl makes at any night.

Police questioning Bo

Khmer Mom Beats And Abuses Four Year Old Daughter; Forces Her To Beg For Money

October 18, 2007
Story : Kampee
Photo : Kampee
Translater : Sunny T
Pattaya Daily News (Thailand)

A Khmer mother was arrested and charged with child abuse for forcing her four year old daughter to beg in the streets at night time.

On 18 October 2007, at 1 AM, Pattaya Police Lieutenant Colonel Santi Chai-niranam received a phone call, from a tourist, that a foreign woman had abused and beaten up her own daughter and forced her to sell chewing gum and beg for money around the beer bars on Soi Bua Khao and Diana Inn Beer Bar Group, Moo 9, Nongprue. Police Lieutenant Colonel Grit Larb-ithisan rushed to the area to investigate.

Officials encountered a young Khmer girl named “Bo” (alias), about four years old, who was crying and being consoled by a tourist. The young girl had many bruises on her arms and legs. Bo said that her mother had taken her from their country and snuck into Thailand. They came to Pattaya to beg in order to pay off debts. Her mother, apparently, has done this for many years.

Everyday, her mother left her near beer bars and she was expected to beg for money from tourists and sell chewing gum. Each day, she made from five hundred to one thousand baht. Her mother left a mobile phone, which she hung around her neck, and called her to check how much money she had made. She came and picked her up every night. Bo’s mom kept all the money that Bo made. If Bo refused to go out begging, she was beaten up, unmercifully.

Bar girls often scolded Bo because she disturbed the tourists. On this particular night, she was left near a beer bar again, but hadn’t made enough money as she was afraid of the police. However, her mother called and bullied her to make more money. She also showed up and started beating her up. At this point, bystanders, who were appalled by what they witnessed, called the police; but her mother had disappeared by the time they arrived.

While the police were interviewing the young girl, Bo, they noticed a woman standing nearby looking at her. Bo pointed to the woman and indicated that she was her mother. The police immediately detained the woman who was, apparently, Bo’s mother. She gave her name as Miss Yung (31), from Cambodia, but was unable to produce a passport. She said that she has been sneaking into Thailand for more than three years. She said that she did not abuse her daughter, but just wanted her daughter to assist her in making money so she could get out of debt. As for the bruises on her body, they were just a result of normal punishments as she had been a naughty girl. However, police weren’t buying this and took Miss Yung to the police station.

At the police station, Miss Yung admitted that she forced her daughter to sell chewing gum and beg for money from tourists. She would normally make one thousand to two thousand baht per day; but, as it was low season, she was only bringing home about five hundred baht, daily. Therefore, she had forced her daughter to sell chewing gum and beg in the vicinity of the beer bars. Only when the bars closed, could “Bo,” finally, go back home. If she didn’t earn enough money, she was beaten up as punishment.

The officials gave Miss Young a stern talking to and charged her under the Alien Act. She was charged with entering Thailand illegally. Young “Bo” was, temporarily, sent to the Youth and Child Rights Protection of Pra-Mahatai Foster Home and will be sent back to Miss Yung before they are deported from Thailand.

Beggars can be choosers: UN agency

Tue, June 19, 2007
The Nation (Thailand)

The "begging business" is so profitable that a beggar can earn up to Bt10,000 a month, prompting many Cambodian beggars to come to Thailand, the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region (UNIAP) said yesterday.

At a Bangkok meeting attended by representatives from the Thai and Cambodian governments, UNIAP project coordinator Panadda Changmanee said a study was conducted on 140 Cambodian child beggars, some of whom were begging and some who are now under the care of the Social Development and Human Security Ministry.

The study - as part of the Friends International's research on foreign child beggars in Bangkok - found that 80 per cent of the Cambodian children came to Thailand with their mothers or relatives. Nine per cent of them were disabled and 41 per cent were infants and toddlers. They begged in the streets of Bangkok and Pattaya from eight to 18 hours a day.

While 22.6 per cent earned between Bt251 and Bt300 a day, 18.9 per cent earned between Bt751 and Bt1,000, and one child beggar in Bangkok's Sanam Luang reported to earn Bt1,500 to Bt2,000 a day, Panadda said.

This is more than Bangkok's minimum daily wage of Bt184, she added.

Most beggars travelled by bus from Poipet to Mor Chit bus terminal before starting to beg on the streets of Bangkok, Pathum Thani and Chon Buri.

As for the Thai attitude towards Cambodian child beggars, it was found that 30 per cent of Thais interviewed gave money to Cambodian child beggars, while 70 per cent admitted they used to give money to beggars.

About 60 per cent said they gave between Bt1 to Bt10 to beggars and about 41 per cent gave money to beggars twice a month, Panadda said.

Calculated at an average of Bt5 per time, giving to beggars twice a month or more would mean that Thai people spent about Bt21 million on beggars every month, she said.

"The new information is that children come with their mothers or relatives due to poverty - not because they are victims of human trafficking. They come willingly and enjoy begging because it yields a lot of money. Even when they are deported to their home country, they keep returning.

"The Thai and Cambodian governments are working together to tackle the problem by setting up a help centre in Cambodia to support those deported by the Thai government," she said.

Social Welfare Service Office Director, Pakorn Phanthu, said Social Development and Human Security Ministry's survey this year found there were 1,453 beggars - 44 per cent were Thais, the rest were foreigners.

The worrying find was that 42 per cent of the foreign beggars were children and 43 per cent women and they came to beg willingly, though some were lured into begging.

Pakorn said the ministry was working with Cambodia to establish a centre to take care of victims so they go back to beg.

Meanwhile, a draft legislation of the Control of Beggars Act 1941 - which stipulates it is a criminal offence to force children, women and disabled people to beg - is now at the Council of State for consideration, he said.

Begging for change [-Cambodians make up the largest group of non-Thai beggars in Bangkok]

Rescued street children in a government centre giving educational training. (Photo: Bangkok Post)

Still struggling on the street. — AFP

Claire Ann Milligan of Friends International with one of the rescued street children. (Photo: Bangkok Post)

Although they may come here 'voluntarily', Cambodian children working on the streets in Thailand would rather be at home and in school

Tuesday April 24, 2007
NATTHA KEENAPAN and ROBERT FEW
Bangkok Post

It's a typical weekday morning inside the Ban Phumvet reception home for boys in Nonthaburi - and it's typically hectic. Toys are scattered across the floor of an open-air classroom where around 20 children are about to begin their first lesson of the day. In front of them is a small whiteboard covered with the Khmer alphabet.

For most of these children, it has only been a few weeks or less since they were on the streets begging. Their journey began with severe poverty in their hometowns in Cambodia, and its end - a life with a decent chance of a better future - is not yet in sight.

Puen, 11, sits down quietly in the noisy classroom ready to begin his language class. This shelter is not new to him and many of his classmates are not strangers. The children at Ban Phumvet, who range from two to 17 years old, have been rescued from the street and will stay at the shelter before being sent back to Cambodia. Many, like Puen, have been through this process before; and many will be back again.

"I went back to Cambodia [after being caught last time] and found that my father had left us for another woman" said Puen. "Now my mother and I don't have a home. My mother told me to come here again to beg so that we will have enough money to build a house. She said I can go to school when we have the house and she will buy me a bicycle."

Puen was found begging in Chon Buri earlier this year by a government "raid and rescue" team, made up of officials from the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and local police.

Just a month before he was arrested, Puen and his younger brother had been deported to Cambodia after a year spent begging in Thailand, followed by several months in Ban Phumvet. They returned here with their aunt from their hometown in Poipet, just over the border from Aranyaprathet.

Cambodians make up the largest group of non-Thai beggars in Bangkok.

While earlier studies on begging in Bangkok focused on the fact that many child beggars are forced to beg, a survey published in October last year by the NGO Friends International entitled The Nature and Scope of the Foreign Child Beggar Issue in Bangkok, suggests that most Cambodian child beggars come voluntarily with their mothers or relatives.

According to Friends International, which works with street children in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, Honduras and now also in Thailand, child beggars rely on informal networks of friends and family to facilitate their journey to and stay in Bangkok.

"Most of the children who come back are among those who receive the least support in terms of education, training and reintegration services. A lack of family support systems or income earning opportunities means that after deportation, children quickly return to Thailand," said Claire Ann Milligan, project coordinator of Friends International in Bangkok.

The organisation provides education and vocational training to children in four state-run shelters in Bangkok, funded by Unicef Thailand. They are Ban Phumvet, (aka, Pak Kred Reception Home for Boys), Ban Raitipung (Nonthaburi Home for the Destitute), Ban Metta Remand Home and Ban Kredtrakarn (Kredtrakarn Protection and Occupational Development Centre). The training, which is given in Khmer, is intended to prepare the children for their return to Cambodia and to reduce the chances of them returning to the streets of Bangkok.

The precise number of child beggars in Bangkok is unclear. The Ministry of Social Development and Human Security reports that approximately 300 street children were assisted from 2005 to 2006. The International Labour Organisation reported in 1998 that over 1,000 children had been caught begging in Bangkok, nearly all of them Cambodian. A recent US State Department report estimated that there are 20,000 children on the streets of Thailand's major urban centres.

"Cambodian children feel that it is their responsibility to take care of their parents," said Chantana Sueprom, a Khmer-speaking staff member of Friends International at Ban Phumvet. "Although they want to go to school, they would rather work to earn money for their families."

In Cambodia, poverty, debt, natural disasters and disease are on the rise, according to the World Bank's 2006 poverty assessment. The country remains one of the poorest in the world, with an average life expectancy of just 57 years.

Economic and social destruction from more than 30 years of conflict have left a legacy of malnutrition, poor heath and severe poverty.

Nearly 50 per cent of all Cambodians are children - and more than half of them are working.

Unicef estimates that between 10,000 and 20,000 children are working on the streets of Phnom Penh alone. Many of these working children scavenge rubbish from dusk till dawn just to earn 2,000 riels (16 baht) a day.

As most child beggars in Bangkok earn 200 to 300 baht a day, the coins and small notes dropped into their paper cups amount to more than most families earn in Cambodia.

While it is a cause for concern that child beggars are not in school - child protection experts are even more worried about the dangers children face on the streets. Many children also sell flowers or other small items like sweets and tissues at night in red-light districts. The risk of them being lured into the sex industry is both obvious and real.

"Even if they are with their families, they are in an exploitative and dangerous situation," said Amanda Bissex, chief of child protection at Unicef Thailand. "They are subject to physical and sexual abuse, drug addiction and illness, including HIV/Aids.

"One problem is that these children are often treated as illegal immigrants, not as victims of trafficking," said Bissex. "In addition, people are so concerned about trafficking that they forget there are children who have not been trafficked but who are in a situation that can be just as dire. Such children also need special services and care."

Unlike the victims of trafficking, who are provided with psychosocial services and educational and vocational activities, most non-Thai child beggars who come to Thailand with their families do not get any such support, either here or in their country. This means they are far more likely to return to Thailand.

The unlucky ones are simply picked up by the immigration police and deported. The luckier ones, like Puen, are found by rescue teams and transferred to shelters like Ban Phumvet, where more services are now becoming available.

"We help the government to provide non-formal education, recreation and life skill activities for children in their mother tongue, to better prepare them for their return and hope that they won't be forced back," said Friends International's Milligan, adding that services in the four shelters will also be provided in Lao and Burmese, in the near future.

At the same time, Unicef is working with both the Thai and Cambodian governments to develop sustainable return and reintegration services for victims of trafficking and vulnerable migrants that focus on income generating opportunities for families to ensure they have the money to send their children to school.

"Given the economic disparity between Thailand and Cambodia, children will continue to come here despite the government crackdown on beggars," Bissex said. "And they may end up in other forms of employment that are much worse."

Puen said he is one child who will not be returning to Thailand.

He said he will tell his mother that his dream is to study and use computers - an amazing piece of technology that he encountered for the first time at a shelter on the Thai-Cambodian border when he was deported late last year.

"It was fun. I want to study computers. I want to work in anything where I can use a computer," he said.