Bangkok's Indifference to the Suffering of Children

 I live in the heart of Bangkok’s CBD, an area full of businesses, apartments/condos, malls, shops, hotels, and lots of residents, tourists, business people, an area which is always crowded.  Although not beautiful, it is convenient and functional.

Sadly, my part of town is also the home of many small children, from new-borns (a mother nursing her child is common) to about age 10, who are brought and kept there by adults to beg for money.  These children and their handlers live on the street, are there day and night, during rain and intense heat, it doesn’t matter.  When I return home from a concert at night, the children are asleep on the pavement.  I never leave my condo without encountering one or more clusters of them.  It is a sight too sad to describe or bear.

No one seems to know much about them, except the common learning is that the children are Cambodians (I guess this is suppose to make the Thais care not at all), that the handlers may or may not be their parents and are mostly likely not Thais, and that they are organized and run by gangs, dark forces, or the Mafia.  The money given to the children go to the organizers.  It is said that each child has a daily quota. 

Everyone knows that the children are there and what they are doing.  One popular spot for them is within 15 feet of a police booth.  The children stay right next to merchants who are outside their shops urging customers to enter.  No one does anything about this and of the few people I’ve asked, no one professes to know anything about it or how or if it can be stopped.

This breaks my heart every day.