• 
• 

Published on October 2, 2007

Amornwich Nakornthap, director of the Ramchitti Institute and head of the Child Watch Group, told a seminar at the Thai Health office in Bangkok that Child Watch and the Narcotics Control Board interviewed 70,000 youths nationwide during February this year about physical abuse.

The survey found that 9 to 10 per cent of students at high schools, vocational colleges and universities suffered physical and mental abuse. That figure suggested about 700,000 youths were victims of violence nationwide, Amornwich said.

While males were more likely to use violence, there was a higher tendency for females to resort to violence, partly due to society being more open to gender equity.

Women no longer suppressed aggression and were prepared to act more violently, he said.

There were now 40,000 cases of violent crime committed by youths a year - a sharp rise over recent years.

Risk factors for youths becoming susceptible to violence included a lack of parental presence - due to divorce or having to study away from home.

Amornwich said this affected 31 per cent of high school children and over 50 per cent of college and university students.

Low academic achievement - of less than 2.00 GPA, of which 10 per cent, or about 100 students per school, suffered  - doubled or tripled the propensity of students to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, skip classes, become gang members, or use violence, he said.

Violence was portrayed on television and in movies at a rate of 3-4 scenes an hour, thus youths watching TV for three hours a day would see 12 acts of violence.

By the time they were 20 years old they would have seen thousands of such scenes that could influence their behaviour, he said.

Kamnuan Pongsaksri, a parent from the Family Network, said the previous government's campaign to encourage children to express themselves turned out children who were confident, but some were prone to use violence.

But children alone could not be blamed because adults did not provide limits to such freedom of expression.

Kamnuan urged parents and teachers to encourage children to do good deeds before further encouraging them to express themselves freely.

Even at all-girls schools, student gangs extorted money from fellow students, stole cell-phones or accessories, skipped classes, and fought over boys and among themselves.

Suriyadev Tripati, chief of the Thai Health youth and children's health project, said Thai families should teach children social skills such as non-violent solutions to conflicts and how to deal with disappointment.

He urged schools and communities to promote activities to help kids develop skills and called for the establishment of a media fund to promote good media content and control the level of violence seen in the media.

He warned that if this issue was not solved soon, a new generation of cruel and violent youths would emerge.

The Nation