Thailand's human trafficking draws UN attention

Aug 7, 2011
By Peter Janssen
DPA

Samut Sakhon, Thailand - Ei Phyo, 18, from Myawaddy, Myanmar, arrived in Samut Sakhon four years ago to work in a fish-ball factory in the coastal city 30 kilometres west of Bangkok.

Like most illegal migrant workers in Thailand she could not afford to pay the 16,500 baht (550 dollars) in transport and police checkpoint bribery fees that feed the multimillion dollar human trafficking trade.

Ei Phyo worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for 4,000 baht (133 dollars) a month with 1,000 baht deducted to repay her debt to the factory owner for advancing her entry fees.

'For two years I never left the factory once,' Ei Phyo said. 'Even when I had paid back the debt they wouldn't let me go outside because the boss said it wasn't right to take a break right after paying him back.'

Finally she managed to escape by putting her regular clothes on under her uniform and shedding her factory outfit after taking out the trash through a back exit.

'Now that factory has built a taller wall around it to make sure no one gets out,' said Ei Phyo, who currently has a better job in Samut Sakhon and has joined Thailand's registered workforce of migrant labourers, who number close to 1 million.

Her tale of modern indentured servitude is mild compared with some others.

Horror stories of Cambodian and Burmese labourers virtually enslaved for years on Thailand's armada of small fishing vessels abound.

'I ran away after one of my friends lost his arm in one of the boat's machines,' said Nai, 25, a Burmese migrant.

He has spent the past six years in Thailand being 'sold' by agents, usually compatriots, to one factory or fishing boat after another until ending up in Samut Sakhon, home to an estimated 300,000 Burmese.

'No matter how many problems I have in Thailand I have to stick it out because I still haven't made enough to pay back my debts at home,' Nai said. He had to borrow 6 million kyats (750 dollars) to pay an agent to get him into Thailand six years ago.

'An assessment of the cumulative risk of labour trafficking among Burmese migrant workers in the seafood industry in Samut Sakhon, Thailand found that 57 per cent of these workers experience conditions of forced labour,' said the US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, released on June 28.

The report placed Thailand in the Tier Two category for the second consecutive year, along with such countries as Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Russia and Zambia.

The UN's special rapporteur on human trafficking will be in Thailand from Monday to August 19 to assess the kingdom's progress, or lack thereof, in tackling the illicit trade.

'During my mission, I wish to reach out to a wide range of stakeholders and trafficked persons themselves, so that their voices are heard and can be considered in the network of laws, policies and measures related to trafficking in persons,' Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said.

The Thai government has welcomed the trip.

'We are concerned about being on the Tier 2 watch list,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Thani Thingphakdi said. 'We have made serious efforts to address the human trafficking problem and we feel that a lot of progress has been made.'

Thailand's dynamic and diversified economy has been a magnet for illegal and legal migrant labourers from less-developed neighbours - Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar (also called Burma) - for decades.

This underclass of more than 2 million migrants now man the jobs Thais increasingly shun in the country's vast plantations of rubber and palm oil, on construction sites, as domestic servants and aboard thousands of small fishing vessels.

Thailand has made efforts to legalize the migrant labour force, having registered some 996,276 Cambodians, Lao and Burmese as of August 1 under its nationality verification process.

On June 14, the Labour Ministry proposed establishing a private insurance fund to cover migrant workers for work-related accidents or illness. For other ailments, registered migrant workers can benefit form the national universal health plan.

But abuses of migrant labourers abound and prosecutions are few and far between.

'Corruption remained widespread among Thai enforcement personnel, creating an enabling environment for human trafficking to prosper,' the US State Department noted in its report.