orphans in Bali
We are used to reading in Dickens of the exploitation of children in orphanages, their poor living conditions, forced to work. That was Industrial Revolution England. Travel to modern-day Bali and you will find exactly the same model for orphanages run by equally crooked and unscrupulous owners.
There are 78 registered orphanages in Bali. All are private. Almost all are commercial scams exploiting children for tourist dollars. Such is the profitability of these private orphanages that their numbers have doubled in the last few years.
Many of the children are not orphans. The owners of the orphanages persuade poor families to part with their children to fill their orphanages as to them they are a source of income.
The children do not receive education, are poorly fed, lack proper health care, are poorly housed, live in dirty squalid conditions, are forced into child labour, begging on the streets, street performers, are working on dangerous building sites.
The children are beaten by the owners of the orphanages.
The owners of these private orphanages are becoming rich on the back of the children, driving around in expensive cars, sending their own children to university.
The corrupt police, social workers, judges, politicians, in the pocket of the owners turn a blind eye to the abuses.
Taxi drivers in league with the orphanages deliver gullible tourists to their doorstep.
It is the tourists who are financing this abuse of the orphans. It is their tourist dollars that is financing child exploitation. If they no longer donated money, or at least asked questions, asked to inspect inside, talked to the children, the orphanages would close as there would be no incentive to run them.
– Bali orphanages: How tourist cash funds a racket
– Exposing Bali’s Orphanages
– Bali’s orphanage scam
– Children exploited by fake orphanages in Indonesia
