TITLE: Fight for one's life

Thailand is a well-known tourist paradise, because of its turquoise-blue beaches and beautiful coral reefs, but in Thailand also struggles with complex issues of poverty. Children and women seem to be the ones who most suffer in this unequal financial world we live in.

Human trafficking, sex industry, or children exploitation, all results of desperate people looking for ways to survive, and those who profit from it. Since I arrived in Thailand, on a extended period of traveling, I have been confronted by this ideia that children are often seen as liabilities, that communities try to find ways to make a profit from them, such as in the Muay Thai fights.

Not being satisfied with what I have heard and read about, I decided to join a Muay Thai gym up in Northern Thailand. After one month, maintaining a daily contact with young fighters aged 14 to 16, I realized that most of those children were abandoned by their families, while others are just “runaway” kids looking for a way out of the streets. These children found a way to have some place they could call home, where they have food to eat, a bed to sleep in, a family who can give them support, but essentially they found a open door to a future that they once thought unattainable. Muay Thai can be seen and judged as a very cruel and exploitative sport, but if we look closely we may realize that these kids are not only fighting for a title, they are fighting for their lives.

AUTHOR: Berta Couto (Portugal)