Child traffickers may try to exploit tsunami survivors

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Swedish and Thai police said yesterday they were searching for a 12-year-old Swedish boy last seen leaving a hospital in Thailand with an unknown man in the aftermath of the tsunami in South Asia.

In the days following the devastating earthquake and tsunami, there have been unconfirmed reports of dozens of orphaned children being taken by unidentified people, some of them possibly child traffickers.

A boy matching the description of Kristian Walker was last seen Monday with a German man at a hospital near the resort of Khao Lak, Thailand, but has since vanished, despite a desperate search by his American grandfather, Daniel Walker, family and police said.

The boy was listed as missing by international law-enforcement agencies worldwide yesterday.

Swedish and Thai police said they were searching for the boy, but said they could not confirm media reports that he had been kidnapped.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said yesterday the Thai government was working closely with hospitals to prevent human trafficking gangs from taking advantage of the situation, although he stressed that there was no firm indication that they were.

This week, the Swedish branch of Save the Children, or Raedda Barnen, warned governments in South Asia to be mindful of children left orphaned or without families in the disaster, saying they could be potential targets for pedophiles.

UNICEF and other child-welfare groups warn that the gangs — which are well-established in Indonesia — may well be whisking orphaned children into trafficking networks, selling them into forced labor or even sexual slavery in wealthier neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.

Such trafficking, if confirmed, would vastly deepen the suffering of children already struck hard by the Dec. 26 massive earthquake and tsunami.

Indonesia estimates that 35,000 children on Sumatra island's Aceh province lost one or both parents to the disaster.

Fueling the suspicions, many Indonesians have received mobile phone text messages this week inviting them to adopt orphans from Aceh. The police are investigating the messages.

The threat of trafficking appears more serious in Indonesia than any of the other Asian nations hit by the tsunami, probably because the scale of death and destruction is greatest here and the territory more remote, UNICEF director Carol Bellamy said yesterday.

Making matters worse, the hardest-hit area in Indonesia — Aceh — is not far from the port city of Medan and nearby island of Batam, which are well-known transit points for gangs shipping children and teenagers out of Indonesia.

"This is a situation that lends itself to this kind of exploitation," Bellamy said.

Children must stay in Aceh until all are registered, a project that could take a month. After that, they will be allowed to leave, preferably for other parts of Sumatra.

Bellamy said registering Acehnese children was a top priority and would help reunite families.