Babies up for sale online

FB page exposes group that invites bids from prospective buyers

A popular Thai Facebook page has reported that a group of people were selling their babies via a Facebook group, which is now inaccessible.

pakpoom Dechhasdin, also known as More lab panda, posted a picture showing numerous posts captured by Thai netizens in the group showed that some were seeking to pay for Thai female babies from the northern part of Thailand.

A Facebook user in the baby-selling group asked why people were not opting for legal adoption. one person replied that going through the legal process would involve a lot of paperwork, qualifications and would cost much more than just simply buying a baby on the Facebook group.

The prospective buyer said he was earning only 18,500 baht (rm2,380) a month, an income that many adoption agencies would say is inadequate.

Several Facebook pages also reported that teenage mums would post pictures in the group saying they were pregnant, and ask people to bid for their babies.

But these would often turn out to be a scam. prospective baby buyers, after supporting the pregnant teens for nine full months in the hope of getting a child, would find the supposedly pregnant teen ghosting them.

A group member posted that he or she had spent more than 50,000 baht (rm6,440) trying to adopt a child and had been scammed many times.

The revelation has generated much interest on social media, with many netizens expressing concern that these adoptions were not done with honest intentions and pointed towards human trafficking.

The private Facebook group is currently locked and not visible on online search.

unicef reported that up to 400,000 Internet users aged between 12 and 17 in Thailand were victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse cases per year, but only between 1% and 3% of victims had reported such cases to the police.