PHNOM PENH
Cambodian police have arrested a woman who had kept her daughter shackled to a pole at home for two years, after adopting her in lieu of payment for a debt - an instance of what NGO's in the country have come to term "debt bondage."
The Phnom Penh Post reported Monday that the 4-year-old had been rescued in southwestern Koh Kong province after a neighbor alerted police to the case.
The adoptive mother told the police that she worked long hours as a farmer and had chained up the girl so that she “wouldn’t get lost.”
On being taken into custody, the girl told the police how she was once even forced to drink her own urine because she was so thirsty.
“I felt so much pity for [the victim]; it is so bad. I think that all children have the right to be cared for, not chained up like a dog,” Keo Chhon, the neighbor who filed the complaint, told The Post.
Chann Sokunthea, head of women’s and children’s’ rights at local NGO Adhoc, told the Anadolu Agency on Monday that the girl was now "at a shelter [for children].”
The paper reported that the biological mother had given her daughter to the woman two years ago in lieu of payment for a debt, but on contacting the mother after the child was rescued the department of social affairs had said that she refused to take back the child, saying she was too poor to care for her.
NGOs have reported that many Cambodians see children as property and are not educated about child rights. It is not uncommon for a parent in "debt bondage" to give up their child as a way of paying it off. These children are most frequently used as indentured servants by the families that "adopt" them.
Just last month, a couple was charged with abuse for brutally beating a 7-year-old girl and her 14-year-old sister who worked for the pair as maids.
NGO head Sokunthea told the AA that despite the stepmother only being thumb printed, and forced to sign a document promising not do anything similar again, Adhoc still hoped the woman would still face court.
“Adhoc has asked police to reinvestigate in this case,” she added.
“In Cambodia, women are uneducated and they don’t know the law and when families are poor they get the money from someone else and in case they have no money to pay back, so they send the kid to work or get married.”
www.aa.com.tr/en
