Couple stand trial for "renting" children

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Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by Anchor Moy »

A couple arrested in September for renting 20 children from their parents and forcing them to sell fruit on Phnom Penh’s streets and at beer gardens stood trial on Thursday at the municipal court.

Nine of the children testified during the hearing, explaining how they had been made to work until 3 or 4 a.m., got insufficient sleep and were forced to share a stifling room. While the husband never beat them, one girl said, the wife sometimes “slightly” hit them...
This is tragic:
Asked why she had handed her child to the couple, Ms. Toeu said she felt she had no options. “I’m poor. I am a farmer and my living condition is very low,” she said...
The whole thing is all totally wrong and i definitely think the couple were exploiting these kids. But no matter how desperate they are, surely the parents have some responsibility here too ? Judging from the article, the kids were not so much "rented" as given as collateral by their parents in exchange for a loan.
Ranging in age from 6 to 17, the children were part of a labor ring forced to work through the night and into the early morning to pay off money given to their parents by an unknown middleman...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/coup ... ng-106816/
And what will the kids do now ? :(
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by SinnSisamouth »

if da parents had any sense theyd get their own kids to work for them selling stuff

dat way cutting out two middlemen!
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by Fourkinnel »

They've being doing this kind of crap for years. When i first came here several years back I was warned not to give money to the women carrying babies and holding out the toilet pot for the cash deposit. In PP and SHV, probably everywhere, they borrow the neighbors baby for a couple thousand riel then drug it to give sleep or look ill and parade round expecting donations.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by LTO »

Interesting article. The word 'trafficked' doesn't come up even once (except in the title of the police department.) Adult women who have chosen to be prostitutes are "rescued" against their will under the guise of being "trafficked," (which the papers will bend over backwards to squeeze into the article), but children sold as bonded labor and moved around the country (and perhaps even between countries) and forced to engage in exploitative work, are somehow not 'trafficked', or if they are, it's not worth mentioning. And most all of the international money and orgs aimed at anti-trafficking will ignore children like this because sex is (presumably) not involved. There are plenty of children and family groups in various forms of bondage being moved around SEA to work as beggars and other laborers, (not to mention what goes on in the fishing industry), but the international anti-trafficking orgs don't care for the most part. No honey, no money.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by General Mackevili »

I blame the parents more than the couple, although both parties are fucked up.

Parents have a "duty" to protect their children, period. Renting your own children out is just horrific.

And while it seems that the kids were just used to sell flowers late night, those parents were potentially exposing those kids to the possibility of much, much worse things happening to them.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by willyhilly »

Lots of Cambodians begging in Bangkok, trafficked from Cambodia. The bonded labour/trafficking thing is massive of course especially in the food industry including in Australia. But the NGOs only like the sex angle as in sex workers, why is it so? It must be because the donors make it so.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by prahkeitouj »

Both parents and couple should be blamed. If there is no buyer, there is no more seller.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by LTO »

The 'buyer' is, by extension, those who give money to child beggars. There'd be no Fagin if there were no profit in it.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by Anchor Moy »

A couple arrested for pressing more than 20 children into labour as snack vendors in the capital were convicted yesterday on charges of “subjecting a minor to working conditions harmful to his or her health”.
Judge Yin Saroeun sentenced defendants Chea Sady, 30, and his wife, Khen Vanthai, 28, to two years in prison each... The couple were arrested in a raid last September in Phnom Penh’s Chbar Ampov district following an investigation by anti-human trafficking police...

The raid found that there were 11 boys and 11 girls, aged from 6 to 16, being ferried into the city on a daily basis to sell fruit and snacks on the streets and in beer gardens from 6pm to as late as 5am...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/c ... ploitation

Good. That should be 20 less kids on the streets (Or is it? where do they go now? "Working" for someone else ?) And what about all the others ? Still plenty to do there.

As someone (LTO ?) said :the kids wouldn't be there selling stuff if the tourists weren't buying from them. Don't encourage child exploitation.Children should not be on the streets and on the beaches working at night - ever. Just no. It's hard, but you are not helping by encouraging those who exploit these kids.
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Re: Couple stand trial for "renting" children

Post by juansweetpotato »

LTO wrote:Interesting article. The word 'trafficked' doesn't come up even once (except in the title of the police department.) Adult women who have chosen to be prostitutes are "rescued" against their will under the guise of being "trafficked," (which the papers will bend over backwards to squeeze into the article), but children sold as bonded labor and moved around the country (and perhaps even between countries) and forced to engage in exploitative work, are somehow not 'trafficked', or if they are, it's not worth mentioning. And most all of the international money and orgs aimed at anti-trafficking will ignore children like this because sex is (presumably) not involved. There are plenty of children and family groups in various forms of bondage being moved around SEA to work as beggars and other laborers, (not to mention what goes on in the fishing industry), but the international anti-trafficking orgs don't care for the most part. No honey, no money.
It's posts like this that earn my undying respect. For what it's worth. Spot on.

Business is OK just so long as it doesn't involve younger local women having sex with older white men.

Child labour is a disgrace and the article reaffirms in my mind how it works on the street. I guess the child sex business model runs along similar lines to these. Preying on poor families who can only just about feed themselves but need a doctor or medicine etc.

As to the parents responsibility; It would be a tough choice to make if it was a choice between sending the kid to work with one of these groups or watching your other child dying through lack of money.

The real responsibility lies with the Cambodian people who have money and power to change this, but know it's easier to win the hearts and minds of their people with anti-Vietnamese rhetoric.

What really brings about the changes that lead to society respecting it's poor?
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