B.
21.
The sale of children
The Minority Rights Group submitted to the Working Group a report entitled The Price of a Child concerning the sale of children in Thailand. The report, presented by a researcher who had spent time in Bangkok and toured the northeastern provinces of Thailand, alleged that in Bangkok there was a large-scale and illegal traffic in children. It indicated that periodic drought conditions, aggravated by a feudal land tenure system, in the north east of Thailand led to a massive exodus of impoverished tenent farmers looking for work in Bangkok and nearby provinces. This situation also led to a steady migration of children from the same region to Bangkok, particularly during the dry season, resulting in a veritable market in children centred in and around the main railway station. Children were bought and sold for different kinds of work in private houses, in restaurants, in factories and in brothels.
22.
The report further stated that there were a number of shops in Bangkok which specialized in the sale of children and teenagers to interested customers. Since by law nobody under 16 years of age could be issued an identity card or be offered employment, for younger children the business was carried out unofficially and secretly. The shops were reported to be working closely with professional child-catchers who intercepted children arriving at the train station to look for work and bought the children from their escorts or lured them to the shops with the promise of food, lodging and a work contract. The children were then sold by the catchers directly to prospective customers or to the shops in question for resale. A large number of child catchers were reported to scout the north east provinces to collect children from poor families and then take them to Bangkok for sale. Child catching had become a profession in itself, and thousands of these people were estimated to be active in the north east.
23.
According to the report, the children were sold at prices which varied depending upon age, strength, beauty and type of sale agreement. The children could be sold on a contract basis, in which case the buyer would pay the full salary in advance plus commission to the middleman (with the family receiving part of the amount contracted, while the child received nothing); or they could be sold outright, after which the buyer would be expected to pay a salary to the child. The report indicated, however, that once the child was delivered to the buyer there was no way of exercising control over the fulfilment of the agreement by the buyer. The preferred age range of children was 7 to 15, that is, below the age at which children could be legally employed.
24. The report further indicated that there were usually between one and two hundred children under 16 years of age arriving in Bangkok by train every morning to look for work. Others might be taken straight from their villages or towns to factories or farms. A shop in Bangkok would receive and sell about 20,000 children a year, about a quarter of them under 16 years of age. In the course of an investigation in the area of origin of many of these children, the linority Rights Group researcher found that many parents had no idea of the dangers facing their children in Bangkok, even though a number of children, particularly young girls, had never been seen or heard from again, and it was know that some had been sold to brothels.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.