Children forced to work in UK cannabis factories
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Children forced to work in UK cannabis factories*
From correspondents in London
September 24, 2007 06:34am
Article from: Agence France-Presse
CRIMINAL gangs are trafficking hundreds of children into Britain and
forcing them to work in cannabis factories, with at least one child per
week being found by police, a report said today.
Campaign group End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the
Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) said there had been
a five-fold increase in the practice in the last year alone.
Children as young as 13, many from Vietnam, were being brought to
Britain to work as "slaves" for organised criminals to push production
of the drug here to record levels, it said.
They are forced to tend cannabis plants grown in suburban houses and
often forced to sleep in cupboards, with little chance of escape for
fear of being caught.
"There is clear evidence that there are young people who are trafficked,
bought and sold, for the purpose of forced labour in cannabis production
in the UK," ECPAT's director Christine Beddoe told The Independent on
Sunday.
"In the past 12 months there has been a 500 per cent increase in the
number of cases being reported to us.
"We now get told about one young person every week being removed from a
cannabis factory. But nobody knows the true scale of the problem."
Police believe the problem has emerged after organised crime gangs, many
of them Vietnamese, moved to dominate the British cannabis market after
the narcotic was downgraded from a Class B to Class C drug in 2004.
Declassification increased the potential rewards of growing and selling
cannabis but decreased the risk of punishment. One police officer was
quoted as saying cannabis was the "cash machine of organised crime".
The newspaper said one three-bedroom house converted into a cannabis
factory can yield up to £300,000 ($700,000) a year.
Simon Byrne, an assistant chief constable of Merseyside Police in
north-west England and the Association of Chief Police Officers'
spokesman on cannabis, said the increase in cannabis production was down
to risk and reward.
"If you remove the risk, people exploit it. If you put the risk back
into enforcement, they will adapt and go into another type of business,"
he was quoted as saying.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has indicated he is in favour of reversing
the cannabis downgrade.
Peter Stanley, from the campaign group Stop the Traffic, was quoted as
saying criminals were effectively picking the children "to order".
"There is evidence that particular south-east Asian villages are
targeted for specific trades, with Vietnam now known to specialise in
boys for cannabis factories," he said.
The campaigners said trafficked children found by police on raids at
cannabis factories need better protection, as many have disappeared
without trace soon after being taken into the care of social services.
They also said there was evidence many of those prosecuted in connection
with such cannabis farms were in fact originally trafficked as children.
ECPAT published a report on Thursday calling for an urgent government
inquiry into how large numbers of suspected or known trafficked children
go missing from local authority care each year.