Student informers enlisted to report on teenage vice
A pilot programme by Thai police to recruit teenage spies in schools highlights growing concerns about sex and drug abuse among the country's young.
The programme involves short training courses for the teenage students by police. The children are given identification codes and telephone numbers to report to police anything they think might involve sexual or physical abuse or drugs.
'Our programme is based on the idea that when children have a problem, they will go first to their friends whom they trust - not to teachers or police officers,' said Major Thana Kositwanichphong, a police inspector from the juvenile aid subdivision.
So far, about 80 students at Bangkok's Wat Bueng Thong Lang school have undergone the brief training session, and children interviewed after the course are enthusiastic.
Several 15-year-olds told the Nation newspaper they planned to call police daily to report on 'bad conduct'.
'I am proud of being a cop kid,' said one. Another added: 'I won't tell anyone I am a spy, but I'm not afraid if someone finds out and tries to get back at me.'
One concern is that of defining terms. Major Thana said he hoped the programme would help children to recognise right and wrong and to become more aware of sexual or physical abuse.
Local reports suggest middle class families are becoming increasingly concerned about what their children are getting up to, or being subjected to, once out of their sight.
A report by Unicef, the UN children's fund, released in December, highlights the growing problem of the commercial exploitation of children in the sex trade around Southeast Asia. 'What experienced child protection workers sense is that the problem is growing, fuelled by conditions of poverty, illiteracy, Aids and drug abuse,' the report said.
It stated that surveys by government and private organisations had found vast numbers of children working in the sex industries of the Mekong sub-region.
Between 30 and 35 per cent of all sex workers in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and the Yunnan and Guangxi provinces of southern China were between 12 and 17 years old. It also said about 60 per cent of Indonesia's 71,000 registered sex workers were between 15 and 20 years old.
Numbers offered by non-government organisations are habitually higher than those confirmed by governments. 'Moral double standards prevail in many countries in the region. While female prostitution is condemned as shameful, the practice of both married and single men using prostitutes is culturally acceptable,' the report said.
Another sign of increasing concern in Thailand are figures offered by the non-governmental Child Protection Foundation. These indicated a 39 per cent rise in the child rape cases it handled last year, up to 215 cases, and a 31 per cent rise, to 164 cases, in its child-abuse cases.
The foundation said 86 of 197 girls it treated were aged nine and under, and that 93 perpetrators were the girls' own fathers, stepfathers or other relatives.
Activists involved in countering child abuse said that any way in which such abuse was reported was to be welcomed, although the effectiveness of the police initiative remained to seen.
