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Cambodians try their luck on Vietnam's streets

Lack of jobs, food and education force many families to take their children to beg, but the risks are high
Cambodians try their luck on Vietnam's streets

An 11-year-old stands in the doorway of his home in Tnaut village after recently returning from a month on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City with his mother, who remains there. (Photo Kevin Ponniah)

Published: July 07, 2015 06:19 AM GMT
Updated: July 06, 2015 11:23 PM GMT

Lyda (not her real name) had six of her eight children with her when the police came.

It was 2007 and the Cambodian family had been in Vietnam for two weeks, begging on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. They were arrested and held for two months before being sent back over the border, about 64 kilometers away.


But the ordeal didn't end there. While Lyda's kids were handed into the care of nongovernmental organizations, she was detained in Cambodia for five more months and only released after selling her family’s small piece of land to pay police for the privilege.

In the village of Tnaut in this eastern border province, one of Cambodia’s poorest and the site of covert U.S. bombings during the Vietnam War, all that separates desperate people like Lyda from crossing into prosperous Vietnam to beg or sell lottery tickets are rice fields.

Vietnam's gross domestic product per capita is roughly double that of Cambodia's and relying on the munificence of the wealthier Vietnamese, while a gamble, is the only option for many with mouths to feed and ample time during the dry season.

Although Lyda had been arrested before, that didn't deter her from making the trip.

“It was very difficult to feed my kids,” she said bluntly.

According to Tnaut’s village chief, Tut Thav, about 30 percent of the 457 families living there have crossed the border to earn money on the streets of Vietnam’s commercial capital, though interviews with villagers suggest the number is likely higher.

Sleeping out on the sidewalks, or crammed into rental rooms, the Cambodian children that panhandle or sell lottery tickets and flowers are vulnerable and at risk of abuse, child protection workers say.

But weak immigration controls compound with poor education levels and endemic poverty as push factors for both parents and children.

“The people lack food [and] basic needs … that's why some parents ask their children to stop studying, drop out of school and send the children to beg in Vietnam,” said Nget Thy, director of the Cambodian Center for the Protection of Children's Rights (CCPCR).

“Some people when they go to beg or to sell lottery tickets in Vietnam, they get good profit … so when they come back, they talk to other people around those communes and especially vulnerable children, they hear [about it] and they follow.”

The center works with Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities and runs a transit center in the border town of Bavet where deported children are assisted upon their return. They can then choose to live at a shelter in Svay Rieng town where the organisation offers vocational training, counseling and other services.

While Thy admits mistreatment by police was once a reality, he claims advocacy and the direct involvement of NGOs like his own has led to better treatment of those repatriated by authorities and a focus on service-provision instead of punishment.

The organisation's statistics show close to 300 Cambodians, 60 percent of whom are children, were sent back yearly in 2012 and 2013 from Vietnam, though the number dropped to less than 200 last year. The first six months of this year saw 98 people repatriated.

Titya (not her real name), 65, who just returned from a week of plying Ho Chi Minh City's streets, said that Vietnamese authorities have become much stricter in recent years on Cambodian migrants, but appeared to be solely targeting begging.

“If you beg for money you will be arrested but if you sell lottery tickets you will be fine,” she said.

But Brett Dickson, a program manager for the International Organization for Migration in Cambodia, said he believed Vietnamese authorities mostly arrest Cambodians for sleeping on the streets, rather than for begging, for “which they have strict laws.”

The IOM used to run the reception and reintegration program in Svay Rieng for returned children but funding has dried up in recent years, leading the Cambodian center to take over.

Dickson added that while repatriation was a government-to-government procedure, his organization had helped to develop standing operating procedures on both sides of the border.

Brokers are not usually involved, though in certain cases children are “rented” by non-family members from their home village, he said.

“Most families, individuals are local and have been crossing and begging in [Ho Chi Minh City] for many years and are quite familiar with finding their own way across,” he said.

Villagers in Tnaut say the number of lottery tickets sold double when children are involved, creating a major incentive to take them out of school and across the border.

Om So, 69, is worried about his daughter and three young grandchildren. They left Tnaut 10 days ago and haven't been in touch.

Although garment factories in nearby Bavet have created alternative employment for young people in Svay Rieng's border villages, So's daughter, despite being only 30, was judged too old by factories that she applied to.

“She has a little plot of farmland but her husband is away [working in Thailand] so she can't cultivate it. She has no choice [but to go to Vietnam],” he said.

“She didn't say how long she would go for but she said if business was good she would stay for a while and if not she would come back soon.”

The fact that she's been away for 10 days gives So a little comfort that things could be going well.

“Going to sell lottery tickets in Vietnam is better than here. At least they can [afford] food and also have some leftover money.”

Lyda agrees, but her lengthy and traumatizing prison stay eight years ago means she will never go back.

“I'm so scared of the police.”

 

 

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