An irate Cambodian father chained his teenage son by
the neck to a power pole to punish him for skipping school to play
online games, police said Thursday.
The 13-year-old's public ordeal came to an end in under two
hours when neighbours alerted the police who brought in a locksmith
to free the child.
"The father was so angry that he found his son at an Internet
cafe instead of at school that he chained him up in public for
people to see, to teach him a lesson," Battambang deputy police
chief Cheth Vanny told AFP, adding that the boy said he was also
beaten by his father.
The 40-year-old father, Sok Thoeun, who works as a motorbike
taxi driver, fled the scene after the incident Tuesday in the
northern town of Battambang, and is now wanted on child abuse
charges.
"He is still on the run," the official said. "This kind of
torture is not acceptable."
Impoverished Cambodia's Internet usage rate is among the lowest
in southeast Asia, with less than 1.5 percent of its 14 million
people listed as Internet subscribers in 2010, according to
government statistics.
But as more Internet cafes have sprung up in urban areas in
recent years, the popularity of online gaming has soared among the
country's teenagers, most of whom have no Internet access at
home.