Begging on Bangkok's Streets

BANGKOK - They look like a kindly couple - she has silvery hair, her arms are filled with souvenirs for loved ones back home. In his shorts and sandals, he has the relaxed look of a tourist enjoying his holiday.

Until he sees the grubby little girl.

She crouches silently, huddled on the crowded pedestrian overpass. Her skinny arm holds out a battered tin cup, its few tiny coins clanking against the din of the traffic below.

The man reaches for his wallet, happy to have helped a child eat today.

But he may not have.

At nightfall, the girl's 'manager' will swoop down and confiscate her earnings. In exchange, he may give her food and lodging - but only if she is lucky.

Most foreign beggars on Bangkok streets are from Cambodia, and the remainder from Burma or Laos. While Thailand is shaken by an economic crisis, it still looks attractive compared with its neighbours.

"When you have an income differential so huge between these countries and Thailand, it is natural for people to come here. It's the push and pull factor," said Jose Pires, regional representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The border between Cambodia and Thailand is highly porous and the children come to Thailand in various ways. Some cross willingly, often encouraged by desperate or greedy parents. Others have no choice: they are kidnapped, deceived, bought or rented.

Grinning and street-smart, ten-year-old Noit chose to slip across the border one night.

"I wanted to come to earn money, and my parents wanted me to come too," she said. "But the police found me." She was deported but promised to be back in a day or two.

In Don's case, parents were involved.

"My little sister and I were home because school had closed," said the 14-year-old native of the Cambodian border town of Poipet. "A neighbour saw me and asked my parents if I could go to Thailand. I was not happy to come, but my parents needed the money."

"Once in Bangkok I tried to find a job but I couldn't. I was too young, I had no papers, I don't speak Thai. So the neighbour told me to go beg."

Most children, however, do not come here willingly.

At 15, Ven is an old Thailand hand, having crossed the border illegally from Cambodia five times.

"I was swimming in the river with my sister and a Vietnamese man came," he said, remembering his first trip. Many of the traffickers who bring Cambodians into Thailand are from Vietnam.

"He put something on my face and pushed me into a taxi and took me to Bangkok. I couldn't speak to my family or anything. I was very scared." Ven was 10 at the time, just another fearful, hungry little boy.

"When we arrived he beat me, he told me I had to beg on the street if I wanted to eat. He showed me how to sit on the road where there are a lot of people and to ask for money with a plastic cup. I didn't like it. I am very shy."

Ven said he never kept any of the money but had to turn it all over to his agent. "He gave me some food but not enough. I was always very hungry." At night he slept on the street.

Each time Ven escaped, the agent found him, beat him and brought him back. "This time I'm going to hide so he doesn't find me."

When caught, the children are placed in Bangkok's immigration detention center and eventually sent home. But many come back, victims of agents who may pose as relatives to trick border officials and claim custody of the children.

Disabled children are particularly sought after since they elicit greater compassion and bring in more money. Two child beggars picked up by police a few months ago may have even been mutilated on purpose to enhance their money-making potential.

"One of the children's feet had a constriction above the ankle," said Dr Dominica Garcia, who works for IOM at the detention center. "The foot has grown very big, displacing the toes." The child's fingers are stubby and blunt and the doctor believes they may have been cut off in infancy.

"It looked so obvious that these children had a string tied to their extremities so that the lower parts would start to swell."

Dr Garcia's suspicions were strengthened when a man claiming to be their father clamoured for their release but disappeared when she suggested calling the police.

Until recently trafficking has tended to be associated mostly with prostitution. But in recent years the number of illegal beggars in Thailand shot up dramatically. In 1994, according to Thailand's department of public welfare, 93 children were caught begging illegally in Bangkok. By 1997, that figure had increased nearly fivefold to 489.

Child begging and other forms of forced labour are at the heart of a new convention now being debated at the International Labour Organization which is designed to help eliminate the more extreme forms of child labour.

In Bangkok in recent months, there are unofficial reports that the number of children picked up begging on the streets may have dropped. But those watching the trade do not believe there are fewer children. Officials admit privately that Thailand is a big country with many cities, and that the children are probably being taken elsewhere as the net in the capital tightens.