Former Cambodian child beggar triumphs over trafficked past to help others

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SINGAPORE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Longdy Chhap was five, polio consumed his body, leaving him confined to a wheelchair and rolling around to play outside in his village near the seedy Cambodian border town of Poipet.

By his own telling, his family became poor because of him, so when a broker came to his neighbourhood and offered wayward or disabled children easy money begging across the border in Thailand, the choice was easy for Longdy, who guesses he was about eight at the time.

Holding his hand to one ear, he said one voice told him "a disability kid makes a family poor". In the other, he heard the broker's voice: "You will have good money to help your family."

So Longdy became one of hundreds of children trafficked from Cambodia to beg on Thailand's streets.

There are at least 1,000 trafficked child beggars in Thailand, most of them from Cambodia, according to the Mirror Foundation, a Thai charity that spreads awareness about child trafficking and rescues about 50 children each year.

Children like Longdy beg on pedestrian overpasses and busy shopping streets in the Thai capital Bangkok and other cities.

Longdy spent years sitting on sidewalks and streets as a child beggar, learning to navigate the police system so well he later could plan to get arrested when he missed his family and wanted to be deported back home.

Now 27, he told his story after speaking on a panel at Trust Forum Asia, an event in Singapore last week on trafficking and slavery hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"NOT MY WORLD"

As a child in Poipet, Longdy helped with his parents' noodle and spring roll shop, waking at 3 a.m. to chop vegetables and meat with his four siblings as their mother cooked.

When seasonal rains poured down on the dusty neighbourhood roads, his wheels got stuck, caked in mud, stranding him at home where he watched as other children headed to school.

His father once asked him if he wanted to enrol.

"I really wanted to, but I saw them all play with their two legs, and I thought no, it's not my world," Longdy said, sitting in a hotel lobby in Singapore, his crutches at his side.

When the broker came to his home, she was full of promises. "You just sit and ask, and Thais give you money," he recalled her telling him.

So one day, he was loaded into a car with other children, covered with a tarp and smuggled into Thailand.

As the smugglers neared checkpoints, the children would get out of the car and walk through the jungle, someone pushing Longdy in his wheelchair. When they passed the checkpoint, they would meet up with the car and get in again.

The first few weeks the children were well fed and free to watch TV - a treat for Longdy considering there was only one TV in his village, which he could watch by paying the owner shots of cheap local brew.

But then the children began long days begging, dropped off at 5 a.m., picked up at 6 p.m., and warned not to move.

If Longdy did not collect enough money, he would not be fed. The broker said she would send all his wages to his family, but Longdy's mother received only about a third of his earnings.

"FROM ZERO TO 10"

more here : http://in.reuters.com/article/cambodia-humantrafficking-childbeggar-idINKCN0XX02S