Information supplied by Child-watch - wording by Soren "Frank"

In Thailand, children have rights too; the right to study, the right to sleep and eat, the right to grow up happily and slowly without abuse from adults.

If you see any examples of child abuse, where these rights are withheld, contact Child-Watch Phuket 24 Hour Hotline.

Name of Project:

Child-Watch Phuket or Pitak-Dek Phuket

Background:

Thailand has seen a great economical and technological surge over the past decade. The result has been that the rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The victims of such a disparity are, as always, the children. Child labor, child prostitution and sexual abuse by adults results from the race for money and child abuse by parents is a result of the frustrations of poverty.

Prince of Songkla University, Phuket, became involved in the concerns of abused children after one of its foreign teachers was arrested for abjectly sexually abusing young children. These 7 to 11 year old Sea Gypsy boys were easy prey for foreign paedophiles because they craved affection in a loveless society and were abjectly poor.

The local legal, social and educational systems, although well meaning, were painfully inadequate to help abused children in the province. It was only through intervention from outside that the above case was prosecuted at all and the follow up is still grossly inadequate. Local people do not report cases of abuse because there is no channel for such reports and most residents are wary of contact with the authorities. There was a glaring need for a local community group to co-ordinate with the authorities and provide help for children in need.

Target Groups:

Although the original aim of the organization was to curb the onslaught of local and foreign paedophiles, after a meeting of educationalist at the University in November, it became obvious that the target group was much wider than that alone. There were two areas which particularly concerned us.

• Child laborers: In Phuket a number of children of migrant workers, who have no right to attend a school, are working on building sites alongside their parents. There are also children being used as 'sympathy salespersons' by their parents to get donations from tourists, many until the early hours of the morning.
• Sex workers: In Thailand there are a large number of sex-for-sale outlets. Many of these employ, and in some cases, enslave young children for their customer's pleasure. In some cases, these children are sold to the brothels by their relatives or tricked into working in the sex industry by pimps who offer jobs in restaurants in the city.

We are also very concerned about parental abuse and were determined to work alongside the social services departments to find ways to help the victims.

Plan of Action:

Following the meeting in November we had the names of about thirty local people who had volunteered to help the Child-Watch Phuket Organization. A plan was laid to acquire a mobile telephone which could be used as a hot-line to report cases of abuse of children. A date was then set to train the volunteers in how to react to various cases and how children could best be helped. A second meeting was called to which representatives of local Government administration and community groups were invited.

The results of that meeting were as follows:

1. An academic committee was elected to oversee the running of the project.
2. Full support was given by the local police, social services and regional education office.
3. It was agreed to find funding to hire a full-time project officer, buy an office computer, a telephone, stationery and provide printing costs.

By August 1996 the organization had:

• Opened a youth training center in Rawai with a full-time staff member in attendance.
• Provided vaccine shots and clothing donations for the children of illegal laborers.
• Increased its network of volunteers to one hundred and fifty people.
• Followed up an 6 cases of child abuse.
• Was giving evidence at the trial of an accused foreign paedophile.
• Set up the first Beach Teacher classes for immigrant children.