Like Elian, Phanupong Belongs in His Own Home

The circumstances of 3-year-old Phanupong Khaiseri’s arrival in Los Angeles from Thailand on April 11 were demonic. He had been drugged and flown from Bangkok as “familial” cover for an attempt to smuggle a Chinese woman into the U.S sex trade. The boy had been purchased by a sex smuggling ring from his widowed mother, a young prostitute in Chiang Rai in northern Thailand.

The child was undernourished, weak, traumatized and HIV-positive. When discovered by passport officials at LAX, he spent nine days in a hotel guarded by an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent. The Thai consul general, through a Thai community organization, the Community Development Council, finally found a community activist to take Phanupong into her home.

That all has been well and good, but now there is an Elian-type division over what should happen to Phanupong. Some believe that he would be better off in the land of his birth. Others believe that he should stay in the U.S. until they are assured of his welfare back home--and their standards for this welfare are very high.

The whole matter is now with a U.S. District Court, which granted a temporary injunction against the child’s removal from the U.S., a decision that will be reviewed Monday. Should the injunction be extended, Phanupong may have to wait indefinitely while a federal case, brought by the activists, works itself through the legal system.

The Thai consul general wants Phanupong to be returned home. “This definitely is not a matter of international politics,” the consul general, Plyawat Niyon-rerks, said. “It’s a matter of human rights, the right of the boy to go home, to his immediate blood relatives.”

Everybody agrees the child’s human rights are at stake. Yet some activists here say the child’s human rights won’t be respected and that he won’t be safe or taken care of properly in Thailand; witness what happened to him to begin with. But in Thailand, although individual human rights aren’t as vaunted as they are here, there is a high level of humanity and care among the people.

Fear over Thailand’s ability to look after the child--which has been whipped up by media reports here--led to the original injunction and now Monday’s hearing.

In fact, the Thai Ministry of Health has given an assurance that Phanupong will be granted special treatment and subsidy on his return. Thai medical services in the countryside, though not generally as sophisticated as in the U.S., are free and are among the finest in the developing world. Who would pay for this kind of care if Phanupong was held in the U.S. for a long time? And if the child’s life is to be a short one because of his illness, where is the better place for it to end?

Thailand has given custody of the child to his paternal grandparents, who are keen to take him back to Chiang Rai. The grandfather is a pensioned minor official with a decent home. The boy will be among his people and culture. The support of the Buddhist temple will be more helpful there. Some here have suggested that Phanupong might be ostracized in Thailand for his affliction. To the contrary, there will doubtless be an outpouring of protection for a little one so hurt yet so faultless.

The legal proceedings over Phanupong are making a pawn of a sickly little boy once again. The grandparents have been flown into Los Angeles to prove their worthiness. They speak no English. They are disoriented and nervous. They commute two hours on a Metrolink bus every day to see the child. Their modest orchard plantation back home is going to ruin.

The International Thai Leadership Council, a network of Thais and associated foreigners involved with overseas Thai communities, believes that there is room for teamwork here, still. If passionate activists want Phanupong as an anti-slavery poster child, he would be a better one in Thailand than he would be in freakish exile here. Arrangements can be made with all the interested Thai agencies to monitor the boy’s welfare within Thailand, which is where the abuses have to be confronted. If care of the boy falls short, then let all media hell break loose.

The possibility that the child’s future could be monitored by all parties when he returns to Thailand should be made known to the judge Monday. The best outcome would be for this tiny, confused child to be allowed to go from the love of good caretakers here to the love of his land and his kin in his home country.