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| Southeast Asia | |
| Tsunami orphans at sexual abuse risk | |
| 2005-01-02 | |
| Save the Children Fund in Sri Lanka said children orphaned by the tsunami are at risk of sexual abuse in camps or being sold to child traffickers. The international children's aid organization said it has evidence that children in a camp have been bought for about $40, the Scotsman.com reported Sunday. "We believe two children were sold to traffickers from Colombo. We don't know why they have taken the children but we fear they will be passed on to pedophiles or sold for some other form of exploitation," said Tahirih Ayn, a child protection officer with Save the Children Fund Sri Lanka. The number of children orphaned or separated from their parents after the tsunami, which killed nearly 30,000 people in Sri Lanka, is unknown, but in one camp of displaced persons, about 40 percent were children. A Save the Children Fund official said the group feared that children might be sexually exploited by adults in the camps and it recommended children be separated from adults. The group also said some parents who lost children in the disaster have taken orphaned children illegally.
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| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 CU1553: Even if it is mere "household help", it could be terrifying -- look at all the stories about "household servants" in Muslim countries. What I've described isn't chattel slavery, where slaves are owned like livestock - i.e. their offspring grow up as slaves and can be sold like farm animals. In the version of indentured servitude I'm referring to, once the children reach their majority (typically 21), they're free - like every other citizen. As to household servants in Muslim countries - that's an Arab tradition, not a generically Muslim tradition. Even the Arab version isn't chattel slavery - it's merely mistreatment of domestic help, backed up by official discrimination against foreign workers. In fact, you'll find nothing like chattel slavery in Asia, whether in Arabia or elsewhere. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-02 8:58:26 PM |
| #4 Forcible slavery is not just getting a job. Even if it is mere "household help", it could be terrifying -- look at all the stories about "household servants" in Muslim countries. Moreover, sale for slavery is common. Any Google search proves that. When you take a look at the astounding ratios of males to females in India and China, you find a tremendous market. |
| Posted by: Chomose Unomoque1553 2005-01-02 8:19:39 PM |
| #3 Fred: Sometimes the depravity of humanity just takes my breath away. Nah - it's just the depravity of the minds of the officials at the Save the Children Fund. (I'm trying to figure out whether they just have dirty minds, or whether they're raising this issue so as to get more attention from their Western donors). Children being sold as household help isn't exactly anything new in the Third World. The prostitution element is pretty unusual, except maybe in countries like Thailand, which have a pretty liberal attitude to all kinds of commercial sex, coerced or not. In many other countries in the region, being caught selling children for sex can mean heavy jail sentences coupled with floggings.* (In China, it means severe beatings from the moment of arrest until the execution date - a period that has been known to encompass many days). * At the same time, the definition of adult (with respect to the age of consent) varies - in the West, it is usually 16, whereas in Asia, it is often defined as the age of puberty. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-01-02 5:09:06 PM |
| #2 Another reason to keep the UN far away from the rescue & rebuilding efforts. They have rather an ugly history when it comes to the sexually vulnerable (or those who can be made to be so). |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-01-02 3:34:52 PM |
| #1 You said it, Fred. Until I read this, the vulnerability of the orphans to this sort of tragedy had not even occurred to me. |
| Posted by: .com 2005-01-02 3:22:01 PM |