Thread: Is Your Seafood Harvested by Slaves?

... ironic that slaves/ indentured labourers/serfs endowed with freedom have always had to go beg former or new masters for employment in order not to starve, often resulting in far worse conditions but now without food and shelter.

There is hardly a person in the world that does use,wear or eat products of slave like conditions...... be it tourist geegaws to rubber tyres, fruit, wine, jewelry, fuel or boxer shorts.

Here in Thailand some expats ( actually we are all guilty methinks), who think nothing of dropping a couple of thousand on a one night bar tab, often get in a snit about paying the enormous average daily rates of 100-300bt . .."oh! they are so lazy and stupid!!" ????...And we wonder why?

Don't have any answers..it's been that way for centuries and always will be I guess. Doubt there are any people who are willing to give up what they have to benefit the exploited.
Most most do is send an annual supporting donation of a few bucks to so called not for profit organizations purporting to "Save the......"

The Catholic church..the richest organization in the world, preaching so called "love for fellow man" has investments in major corporations that exploit the proles....not to mention the price of a frickin candle!

Editorial:

End the trafficking and work abuses, or we will pay for it
Sunday, Jun 30, 2013



Thailand's fishing industry has come under an unwanted spotlight over the past few weeks with two damning back-to-back reports about the use of forced labour from Myanmar and neighbouring countries.

The reports talked about the dire consequences should the government continue with business as usual and not do enough to clamp down on these illegal practices that effectively bloodies these export items.

"Was the fish you had for dinner caught by slaves?" asked the headline from The Christian Science Monitor, citing a report from the UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) that documented widespread use of forced or captive labour in Thailand's multi-million-dollar fishing industry.

The United States is being pressed hard to do something about these abuses; in fact, it has been for years. For one thing, America is the number one buyer of Thai fish products. The 2011 figure showed Thai fishery exports to the US valued at $1.8 billion. The total industry is worth about $7.3 billion (Bt227 billion).

Another reason why the US is hard pressed to do something about this is that EJF is calling on Washington to downgrade Thailand in its annual US State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, which employs a three-tiered scale to classify all countries - in a bid to eliminate slavery around the world.

Given the two countries' close ties, lowering Thailand's status could be a difficult thing to do.

This is not to say that Thailand is unaware of these questionable and illegal practices at sea. The Thai government has consistently avoided inquiries into allegations of how Myanmar workers were beaten regularly, sold like slaves to other ships and even killed to avoid paying them salaries or intimidate crewmembers.

Perhaps the government doesn't want people to look into allegations that Thai authorities are in cahoots with industry bosses.

About a month after the EJF's "Sold to the Sea: Human Trafficking in Thailand's Fishing Industry" report was launched, the US State Department released its annual TIP report. It was another damning criticism that could translate into sanctions if the government doesn't do something about trafficking abuses promptly.

For years, the US has urged Thailand to take action. Thai law enforcers have vowed to act, but essentially just paid lip service and turned a blind eye to what the US report called "pervasive trafficking-related corruption".

For the past four years, the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons report has given Thailand its second-worst ranking. Bangkok narrowly dodged the worst rank (Tier 3) because Secretary of State John Kerry stepped in and pardoned the country, after a plea for leniency from the Thai foreign minister. But we have now reached the limit on the number of waivers possible. That means Thailand has one more year to prove it will convict human traffickers and rogue employers, who have operated with virtual impunity for years. We have to do something about an awful situation.

Getting the lowest rank would mean the US would have to comply by its own law that calls for targeted sanctions by cutting "non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign assistance". This year's State Department report, released last week, labelled Thailand as a dismal failure.

Government leaders and fishing industry chiefs need to realise that they have moral obligations to all people - consumers, domestic and foreign, as well as our neighbours, when many abused workers come from. We need to go beyond the legal and diplomatic requirements and take this matter very seriously. The Thai fishing industry and other sectors using migrant labour have acquired a dreadful reputation for gross abuse of foreign workers. If the government fails to act this year, unfettered access to the world's biggest market will be in grave danger.

news.asiaone.com

Five Escaped Rohingya Boys Set to Be Traded as Trawler Slaves, Sources Say
By Chutima Sidasathian and Alan Morison
Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Five Escaped Rohingya Boys Set to Be Traded as Trawler Slaves, Sources Say - Phuket Wan

PHUKET: Five young Rohingya boys who fled a family shelter north of Phuket are likely to be offered as ''slaves'' to Thai fishing boat captains in the next few days, Phuketwan has learned.

The boys are today being held in a secret hideout in Surat Thani province, along with one woman. Twelve other Rohingya women and children are scheduled to be trafficked via a border crossing from Thailand to Malaysia this afternoon.



One usually reliable source who has talked to the ''broker'' engaged in buying and selling these boatpeople says that the 12 have been purchased by family or close relatives in Malaysia.

The other five boys and the woman, however, have brought no telephone bids and are likely to be auctioned, the broker told our source.

Human Rights Watch spokesperson Phil Robertson said today: ''The Thai government needs to wake up to the reality that Rohingya women and children in shelters are being targeted by well-connected human trafficking gangs, and those that cannot find money to pay their way to Malaysia will end up being sold into forced marriage, or slaves on fishing boats, or worse.

''Immediate action needs to be taken today to locate and rescue those six Rohingya purportedly being held in Surat Thani, and bring traffickers and any officials involved with these gangs to justice.''

Phuketwan has been able to confirm that at least one of the boys is an orphan who fled the ethnic cleansing in Burma, also known as Myanmar, after his parents were killed there.

The other boys are also likely to have no relatives who can pay for their release. The usual fee is 60,000 baht for an adult and accompanying children travel for free.

However, traffickers generally make money any way they can from young, healthy teenage boys and older males who are not accompanied or who cannot raise the cash to buy their freedom.

The broker holding the five boys is likely to inform fishing trawler captains via contacts that the boys are available, and accept the highest price.

The boys will then be put to work as indentured slave labor on fishing boats. If they survive the dangers and the abuse, they will be released when the captain considers they have earned their freedom.

While Phuketwan has not spoken directly to the broker in this case, reporters have spoken to other traffickers and have been told what takes place in these kinds of cases.

One usually reliable source has spoken to the broker who is holding the five boys and the woman.

Staff at the government-run family shelter in the holiday township of Khao Lak, north of Phuket, are concerned at what might happen to the children they have come to know well since January.

The women and children at the shelter, in Phang Nga province, are among about 2000 Rohingya men, women and children being held in Thailand pending a government decision about their status and their futures.

Many of the women and children, despairing at being held indefinitely, have submitted to offers from traffickers to speed their passage to Malaysia, at a price.

The latest group of 18, who fled the shelter at 2am on Sunday, were filmed by a security camera getting into at least one vehicle on the other side of the wall.

One local policeman has been found guilty of assisting traffickers in a previous escape. The policeman, a senior sergeant, has since been dismissed from the force.

Trafficking of Rohingya has been taking place north of Phuket in a more widespread way since community violence in the Burmese state of Rakhine forced homeless and persecuted families to flee 12 months ago.

The number of people fleeing has increased four times over, with an estimated 30,000 people sailing past Thailand or coming ashore and crossing by land on their way to potential sanctuary in Malaysia.

By raiding smugglers' camps on the Thai-Malaysia border and apprehending passengers rather than ''helping on'' boats at sea, Thai authorities exposed high levels of trafficking in Thailand.

The traffickers often have links to various renegade officers in the military or local police, although the military consistently admits that trafficking is taking place but denies its involvement.

Phuketwan reported at the weekend that at least four young men are being treated at Vachira Phuket Hospital after becoming unable to walk because of excessively cramped conditions in cells at Phuket Immigration headquarters.

''Every day that the government dawdles in setting up a larger facility to unite Rohingya families in one place is another day that the traffickers are able to pick off Rohingya in isolated government shelters, or Rohingya men and boys fall gravely ill in harsh, heavily over-crowded detention centers,'' added Mr Robertson, who is HRW Deputy Director, Asia Division.

''A government policy originally created to provide temporary protection to the Rohingya landing on Thai shores has mutated into a much more sinister policy of indefinite detention in inhumane conditions, with the only way out being offered by human traffickers.

''Why can't the Thai government get its act together and solve this problem?''

Although there's a difference between people smugglers and human traffickers, Phuketwan believes the word traffickers is more appropriate to the trade in boatpeople in Thailand.

Originally Posted by chingching

One local policeman has been found guilty of assisting traffickers in a previous escape. The policeman, a senior sergeant, has since been dismissed from the force.

What a harsh punishment! Dismissal from the RTP! If it's true, he should be named, shamed and charged.

Thailand arrests suspected leader of human trafficking gang
Pairat Temphairojana
(Editing by Alan Raybould and Clarence Fernandez)
August 9, 2013

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thai authorities have captured the suspected leader of a human trafficking gang, who confessed to selling some migrants from Myanmar into slavery on Thai fishing boats and possibly murdering as many as seven, a Thai official said on Friday.

Ko Myo, a 42-year-old Myanmar national, was shot and captured at a rubber plantation in southern Surat Thani during a raid by the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and local police.

The raid follows mounting international concern over the trafficking of Myanmar migrants in Thailand's lucrative fishing industry, one of several sources of human slavery in the country that could trigger U.S. sanctions.

It also follows a Reuters investigation published on July 17 that found human smugglers selling some Rohingya Muslims into slavery on Thai fishing boats.

Thousands of Rohingya have fled Myanmar in recent months after violence with Buddhists, who follow the country's majority religion.

Ko Myo will face human trafficking charges first, said Komvich Padhanarath, a senior official in the human trafficking division of the DSI, which is part of the Justice Ministry. "The murder charge is under further investigation, and it will be a time-consuming process to verify the bodies."

Ko Myo was named in a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation, a London-based non-government body funded by environmental advocacy groups, which called him a trafficker and implicated him in murder and rape.

Komvich said Ko Myo had confessed to trafficking and murder but not rape. Reuters was unable to immediately reach Ko Myo or his representatives for comment.

The DSI would contact Myanmar authorities to identify other gang members and help apprehend brokers there, Komvich added.

The Reuters investigation found that Rohingya who could not pay for their passage were handed by brokers to traffickers, who sometimes sold the men as indentured servants on farms or into slavery on Thai fishing boats.

It also found that Thai naval security forces had been involved in the people smuggling. The navy denied the charge, but the U.S. State Department said the Thai government should look into the allegations.

For the past four years, an annual State Department report monitoring global efforts to combat modern-day slavery has kept Thailand on its "Tier-2 Watch List", a notch above the worst offenders, such as North Korea. A drop to Tier 3 can trigger sanctions, including the blocking of World Bank aid.

Reuters reporters visited a detention center in Phang Nga in southern Thailand in July, where 269 Rohingya men and boys lived in cage-like cells that stank of sweat and urine. Most had been held for six months by then.

Around 261 Rohingya tried on Thursday to escape from the center at Phang Nga but failed, although 30 managed on Friday to break out of a police station in Songkhla, also in the south, police said.

courant.com

Nightmare island where traffickers imprison Burma's Rohingya
John Sparks
08 August 2013

Beaten, imprisoned and sold into slavery - Channel 4 News reveals the fate of Burma's Muslim Rohingya refugees, who flee conflict only to end up in the clutches of brutal human traffickers.

It seems like a lot of people in Thailand are frightened of Tarutao Island, writes Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent John Sparks.

When we asked locals whether they would take us there by boat, they were quick to say no – and that seemed very odd indeed.

It was strange, because Tarutao Island is an absolutely spectacular Thai national park.

Situated 30km from the mainland in the sparkly blue waters of the Andaman Sea, the mountains of Tarutao dominate the surrounding area. It is cloaked in a rich layer of jungle and its beaches are white and hotel-free. It’s the sort of isolated spot that many people dream of spending time on.

Except Tarutao Island is also the stuff of nightmares. It took us weeks to find out why people were so frightened, but in the end it made perfect sense.

Local people and senior police officers, speaking off the record, told us the southern section of this beautiful island is gangster territory – the hood of human traffickers, who run a number of secret prisons from the jungle floor.

It is here that desperate migrants from neighbouring Burma are incarcerated, beaten and extorted – and risk being sold as slave labour to fishing fleets.

Rohingya exodus

Our story begins 2000 kilometres to the north however, a few miles off the shore of another island called St Martin’s. It straddles the border between Burma and Bangladesh and it is here that ocean-going ships anchor while awaiting their desperate human cargo.

The passengers are largely Rohingya – a Muslim minority now fleeing a vicious ethnic conflict in north-west Burma. Their situation is dire – civil rights group Human Rights Watch says they are victims of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

In fact, tens of thousands of Rohingya are now participating in a general exodus – an evacuation that is facilitated according to UN experts and NGO workers, by a sophisticated network of brokers, smugglers and human traffickers.

The numbers involved in this exodus are staggering – according to NGO Arakan Project, more than 35,000 have attempted to flee Burma in the last 12 months.

It constitutes the biggest movement of people by boat since the Vietnam War according to Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch, who warns it may be just the beginning: “In the face of severe deprivation in Burma, the Rohingya have lost hope of staying in their homeland and it is not surprising that they are fleeing in droves. This is going to be a multi-year boat people crisis, and Burma's neighbouring governments are not ready for it."

Brokers and agents promise Rohingya passage to Malaysia – a country where they are generally permitted to stay. The would-be passengers are then gathered in secret locations near the Burmese or Bangladesh coast and hand over the equivalent of £200 for their journey.

When the ocean-going ships are ready, the brokers ferry them out in smaller boats, in a long-winded process that can take 3 or 4 days. Each passenger must wear a coloured wrist band, designating "ownership" by a particular group of traffickers.


Held in cages

The conditions on board these ships are brutal. The Channel 4 News team filmed several vessels used by human traffickers and we recorded interviews with those who travelled inside them.

You can see more in our exclusive report, but we were told that women and children are held in cages just below main deck - while the men squeeze into false decks like large wooden shelves, built into the hull.

One of our interviewees, a nineteen year old called Mohammad, spent 11 days in one of these vessels.

He told us: "We were kept on one of three or four floors in the hold – like wooden shelves. We had to squeeze in next to each other. We couldn’t move and we weren’t allowed to stand up."

Mohammad says he was one of 650 passengers on the boat – although Channel 4 News understands that some vessels set sail with well over 1,000 people on board. The situation inside was described by our interviewees as "intolerable".
I
t was so bad, said Mohammed, that one man decided to take his own life: "This old man crawled by me and said he felt terrible. I think he was depressed. He'd said he was going to the toilet but he jumped off the ship. They didn't go back to look for him."

Our interviewees then outlined another unpleasant surprise. They thought they were being taken to Malaysia, but the ships didn't sail that far.

Secret jungle prisons

Instead, the vessels stopped and disgorged their passengers in remote locations on the Thai coast. They were about to become prisoners in a number of secret jails - and there was only one way to earn their release - their relatives were required to pay a ransom of around £1,500.

The business model is crude and effective. After several days, the captives are told to call their loved ones in Malaysia or Thailand with mobile phones provided by the traffickers.

If friends and relatives are unwilling - or unable to pay, Rohingya are beaten – often with their relatives listening on the line. Rafeeq told us about his experience in floods of tears: "They lined us up and gave us the phone and told us to call them. They demand the money and beat us up. They beat us continually until they get the cash."

Mohammad said he witnessed beatings every single day he was held prisoner: "They hit people in a way that doesn’t make them bleed but injures them inside instead. After that, they give them pain killers to make them feel better because if a prisoner dies, the brokers can't get the money out of them."

Mohammed told us that prisoners who can't pay the ransom are sold as slave labour to Thai fishing boats. "The brokers also warn you about it," he said. "If your relatives don't have money, we'll sell you. That's what they say."

Both Mohammad and Rafeeq say there were held captive for weeks on Tarutao Island – but there was something that did not seem to make sense to us.

Tarutao is also a popular national park in Thailand, with rangers stationed on the island and a major shipping channel running past its western coastline – and that begged an important question. Could a criminal network moving hundreds, or possibly thousands, of Rohingya through the island really operate without the knowledge of the local authorities?

After several weeks, we found people who were willing to talk about what goes on there. The most revealing interview perhaps was with a man called Bo.

Police 'paid off'

He told us he was a member of a trafficking operation with personal responsibility for "security at Tarutao" - and he told me his group had paid off 10 police and military units in the last four months.

"It is like, when we give money to this group, the next group comes along, and it goes on and on. It never ends," he said, with evident frustration. Bo told me one way to avoid paying bribes was to move the Rohingya into different locations every ten days or so: "If the authorities can’t find them, they can’t ask."

I took this description of working practices at Tarutao Island to Somkuan Khampeera, the Police Major-General of regional Satun provincial police. He denied his officers take bribes. "I am strict – myself. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here."

However, he was frank when I asked whether he knew about the use of Taruato and other islands as hotbeds for trafficking. "I know, but we don’t have the resources we need to keep an eye on them all the time. The provincial police don’t have a boat for example."

There was one more person we wanted to speak to – the director of Tarutao National Park, Chaichana Wichaidit. Several days earlier, I had had the chance to question several park rangers about the underground prisons.

"Surely," I said, "you know what is going on". Their response surprised us. For the first time in the park’s history, one ranger told me, the southern half of the island had been made out-of-bounds both to the public and park staff. The director of the national park had even closed down two ranger stations located on the southern shore I was told.

Yet, in a long and at times tense conversation, Mr Wichaidit denied that any restrictions had been placed on the public or staff in terms of where they could visit.

"I don’t know where you get the information from," he told me. If park rangers had been prevented from entering the southern section of the park, then outside influences were to blame.

"Maybe people from outside came and threatened them. If you go there, you might see those people and this behaviour."

Police raid

Well, it turned out the authorities did take a trip to Tarutao. As we conducted our investigation, marine police officers launched a raid on one of Tarutao’s southern bays and they uncovered several jungle prisons – with tents, topped in black plastic and a guard tower at a major entrance.

These camps were occupied by hundreds of Rohingya – with some Bangladeshis and a small number of Pakistanis as well. They told us they had been there for weeks and complained of being treated "like dogs".

Some told me they had been promised a ship to Australia - but that seems a fanciful prospect. A more likely scenario, said one senior officer, was the extortion of their relatives in order to secure their release from the island.

In the end, 176 people were plucked from the forest and they now find themselves ensconced in Thai detention centres. No country is prepared to take them - at least officially – so it seems they will languish there for months - or even years.

More Rohingya will follow however. The great exodus is well underway and there is money to be made from their misery.

channel4.com

Thailand To Become Seafood Hub In Asia

BANGKOK, Aug 17 (Bernama) -- Thailand has eyed to become a seafood hub in Asia in the foreseeable future, based in seaside Samut Sakhon province adjacent to the Thai capital, Bangkok, Thai News Agency (TNA) reported.

According to chief of Samut Sakhon's commercial office Supon Sritabtim, once the construction of new transport routes linking Thailand with neighbouring Myanmar, where there is abundant of seafood supply, through the Sing-korn Permanent Checkpoint in Prachuap Khiri Khan's Mueang district, is complete next year, imports of fresh seafood from Myanmar can directly reach Samut Sakhon, making the seaside Thai province become the largest hub of seafood trade in Asia.

Meanwhile, a group of Myanmar business operators visited Samut Sakhon earlier this week to explore their business opportunities, particularly in the local fishery sector, ahead of the Asean Economic Community (AEC), set to be formed by 2015.

Preecha Sirisaengarampee, President of Samut Sakhon's Chamber of Commerce, led local fishery operators to a meeting with the 92-member Myanmar business delegation, headed by Myanmar's head of Myeik province's Chamber of Commerce, U hla Than, to discuss business opportunities available in Thailand in the lead-up to the AEC.

The Thai and Myanmar delegations also visited Talay Thai Seafood Market, processed seafood factories and the Sinsakorn Industrial Estate, as part of their field trip.

Following the trip, the chief of Samut Sakhon's commercial office told reporters that the Myanmar business operators expressed enthusiasm to become suppliers of seafood products to Thailand because their country is rich in marine resources.

Currently, seafood products imported from Myanmar, shipped to Samut Sakhon through Ranong province in the Thai South, makes up for at least 45 per cent of the total market share of the central Thai province's daily seafood supply.

bernama.com

Thai shrimp produced by forced labour reaching EU and US, warn campaigners
Harriet Grant
Friday 27 September 2013

Report by Environmental Justice Foundation urges import bans amid claims of human trafficking and labour abuses


A seafood vendor in Bangkok. Thailand is the world's largest exporter of shrimp, and exports about 90% of its seafood.
Photograph: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty

Campaigners are calling for a ban on Thai shrimp exports to the EU and US following alleged human rights abuses.

A report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) claims many workers have been trafficked, held in bonded labour and subjected to abusive conditions.

Thailand is the world's largest exporter of shrimp. It exports about 90% of its seafood, mainly to the US, Japan and EU countries. Once considered a delicacy, shrimp has become increasingly popular in the west. On average, every American consumed nearly 2kg of the crustacean in 2011; in the same year, Thailand was the UK's largest supplier of shrimp, with Britain snapping up an estimated $195m-worth.

The executive director of EJF, Steve Trent, says the abuse of workers in the shrimp business is key to the industry's success. "If you look at the economic model [in Thailand], this kind of labour abuse forms an inherent part of it – it's what drives down costs," says Trent. "Everyone in Thailand knows this is going on, for them it's good business."

"We would ideally like to see Thailand take action against the bad guys, but if that's not going to happen, the European Union, as the world's largest seafood market, should introduce trade embargos. There is a reality here that we are eating products in the EU that have been produced by forced labour, on occasion slave labour, coming cheaply and easily from Thailand."
The report bases its claims on evidence collected in two trips, in October 2012 and March 2013, focusing mainly on one fishing town, Mahachai in Samut Sakhon province, about 25 miles south-west of Bangkok. The port is a major part of the Thai shrimp infrastructure, supplying 31.5% of exports.

One of the girls quoted in the report, Aung Aye, told investigators: "I am 11 years old. I had to peel the shrimp shells and extract excrement. I hope that I will never be in such trouble again. I think peeling shrimp is the most difficult task I have ever done. I think [people in the west] eat shrimp because they don't know how it is produced at the factory. If they knew, they wouldn't eat it."

The EJF investigated claims of human trafficking and labour abuses, with a particular focus on pre-processing facilities, known as peeling sheds. It claims that some of the country's largest exporting companies are using shrimp produced under "exploitative, abusive and even violent conditions". The informal nature of the work, which is sub-contracted and highly labour intensive, means it is the least regulated aspect of the supply chain. Once peeled, the shrimp is passed to much larger processing facilities where it is prepared for export to the US, Japan and the EU, Thailand's main markets.

Much of the alleged abuse is suffered by migrant workers who have to undertake arduous journeys to get to the shrimp factories. Workers from the neighbouring countries of Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia make up 90% of the workforce in the seafood processing industry, according to a 2010 Human Rights Watch report.

One migrant reported: "If we started work on the night shift at 4pm, we worked until 6-7am. As for the day shift, we have to wake up at 3am and start work at 4am. If there are lots of shrimps I have to work till 7-8 pm. Those who have debt bondage are not allowed to leave. Security is at the gate who stop them."

Trade experts representing the EU do not believe that import bans are the answer to alleged mistreatment. John Clancy, the EU spokesperson for trade, says the EU is working with the Thai authorities to help fight child labour and human trafficking by monitoring and sponsoring development projects aimed at tackling abuse.

But he stressed the importance of trade as a key tool for development. "Our trade and development policy is based on the assumption that more and more sustainable trade can help boost economic growth, create jobs and eradicate poverty.

"Throughout history there is no country that has moved from a developing state to an emerging economy without trade. Trade is the driver of development."

Trent, however, says responsibility lies not only with the Thai government but also with European officials and, eventually, the consumer. "There isn't a reasonable person in the EU or UK who would happily eat a product that was fed with fish caught by a slave, peeled and prepared by people working for 14 hour days for less than you would earn in an hour, people with their rights denied, their documentation taken away.

"Relatively small increases in the price of this product could transform lives; this doesn't mean going from a £2 bag to a £10 bag, it's a difference of pennies."

theguardian.com

Burmese ‘Slave Labor’ Continues in Thailand, Despite Bangkok Promises
WILLIAM BOOT
Thursday, September 26, 2013


Burmese workers protest outside a CP seafood-processing plant in Mahachai in Thailand’s Samut Sakhon Province on June 23, 2013.
(Photo: The Irrawaddy)

Tens of thousands of Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, including children, continue to be used as virtually forced labor in the seafood processing industry, according to NGOs, despite pressure on the Thai government by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and US State Department monitors.

They are subjected to wage theft, falsification of labor documents, excessive fees for work permits, confiscation of travel documents and in some cases physical abuse, the Washington-based International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) told The Irrawaddy.

The ILRF this week issued a statement spotlighting what it said were appalling work conditions and misuse of countless thousands of mostly illegal migrant Burmese in Thailand’s lucrative shrimp industry, which is worth US$1 billion in annual exports mostly to the United States, the NGO says.

“Migrant workers are paid such shockingly low wages because it benefits Western importers that can get large quantities of cheap shrimp,” ILRF’s director of campaigns Abby Mills told The Irrawaddy.

“Those importers play Thai producers off each other, seeking lower and lower prices, which puts downward pressure on wages and increases the likelihood of labor rights abuses. The incentive for everyone involved is to glaze over potential exploitation while continuing to pay low wages.”

The ILRF’s call for action to stop the abuse comes as the ILO begins a campaign to persuade Thai seafood industry companies to reform.

The Switzerland-based ILO launched in Bangkok on September 16 a Good Labour Practices program “for addressing child labor and forced labor in the Thai fisheries industry.”

The program, funded by the US government, is seeking to bring Thai government officials, industry management leaders and Thai trade union representatives together to address the problem.

However, the ILRF says previous efforts by Thailand’s seafood processing industry to reform and regulate itself have failed.

“Industry-led monitoring systems do not work. The incentives in such a system do not take into account the needs of low-paid migrant workers,” Mills told The Irrawaddy. “Auditors paid for by suppliers want more business from suppliers, so they are more likely to produce positive reports that conceal systemic concerns.”

Employee problems in the shrimp industry in particular have worsened if anything, Mills said. This is because shrimp farms in Samut Sakhon province south of Bangkok have been hit by a fish disease which has reduced production.

“Shrimp production is down by 40% and our partners on the ground are saying layoffs are a big problem right now, particularly as these workers do not seem to be getting any compensation when they are laid off,” Mills told The Irrawaddy.

“The workers who stay, but only work 3-4 days because of fewer shrimps are also not being paid the statutorily required 75 percent salary on days off, according to our partners. It’s a really tough situation.”

Thousands of Burmese are caught in this employment crisis in the shrimp industry because they have no documentation to enable them to move elsewhere in Thailand to find work—and there is little prospect of jobs back home despite Burma’s reviving economy.

As prominent economist Sean Turnell told The Irrawaddy earlier this month, the lack of employment opportunities in Burma remains a “truly critical issue.”

Turnell, co-editor of Burma Economic Watch, was commenting on the plight of as many as 100,000 legally registered Burmese in Thailand whose work permits are due to expire in the next few months. Unless Thai rules are changed these legal workers must return home.

More than 2 million Burmese are estimated to be working in Thailand, most of them illegally and therefore liable to abuse, said the ILRF.

The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting estimated that 400,000 Burmese were in Samut Sakhon province alone.

A UN-funded study by the Thai-based Labor Rights Promotion Network found that “for roughly 20‐30% of Burmese migrant workers, the coercive and deceptive means by which they are recruited into, and then retained, in exploitative working conditions constitutes trafficking into forced labor,” Mills said.

The launch of the ILO’s good labor practices program was attended by several senior Thai government and civil service officials, including Siriwat Kajornprasart, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives, and Pranin Muttaharach, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, as well as industry leaders and foreign diplomats.

But Thailand’s chaotic handling of visa and work permit rules for legal foreign migrant workers—from Laos and Cambodia as well as Burma—suggests that speedy action to clean up the fish processing industry as advocated by the ILO and ILRF is unlikely.

“We hope that the Thai government listens, as it is once again being considered for downgrade in the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons report, and this year they have run out of time to stay on the Tier Two Watch List,” Mills told The Irrawaddy.

The State Department publishes an annual survey of developing countries’ efforts to eliminate exploitation of people and has three categories for effort. Tier Two is to “warn countries that they were on a downward trajectory,” says the department. Tier Three lists countries failing to take “affirmative steps necessary to fight human trafficking.”

Thailand has been on the Tier Two Watch List for four years and was told by Washington in June that it was doing too little to stop “modern slavery.”

irrawaddy.org

Thailand uses slaves from Myanmar to peel its shrimp
Gwynn Guilford
October 1, 2013


Thailand's gutted, peeled and deveined shrimp, brought to you by 13-year-old migrants from Myanmar.
Reuters/Adrees Latif

In some ways, Thailand is a fairytale of economic development. Thanks in large part to exports, its GDP per capita is now eight times what it was in 1980. Its people live 15 years longer than they did in 1970. They’re now better educated, so they are doing more high-value jobs. It’s also an exemplar of family planning; 80% of the reproducing population uses birth control, compared with just 15% in 1970.

Which helps explain why Thailand’s unemployment rate is just 0.9%—the lowest among the world’s major economies.

​

But the upshot is that Thailand desperately needs cheap workers to keep growing. Thais are too educated and too few to do the menial jobs.

The solution? Migrants. And the cheapest of all are undocumented, trafficked and often forced laborers from Myanmar, and, to a lesser extent, Cambodia and Laos.

Thailand’s shrimp-peeling business is a classic example, as the Environmental Justice Foundation, a non-governmental organization, highlighted in a recent report (pdf). It’s a critical industry for Thailand, which typically produces one quarter of the 2.6 million or so tonnes (2.9 million tons) of the planet’s annual shrimp output. Some 90% of that goes abroad, making Thailand the world’s biggest exporter of shrimp. That brought in $3.5 billion in 2011, just shy of 1% of GDP.

Most of that shrimp enters importing markets already peeled, beheaded, deveined and gutted. But dismantling tiny crustaceans is laborious. The conditions in “peeling sheds,” reports the EJF, are noxious, the hours long, and the pay dreadful.

Unsurprisingly, Thais long since stopped taking those jobs. Migrants, mostly from Myanmar, can earn more there than they would at home, and thus send money to support their families. Though Thailand’s estimated 3 million migrants make up 10% of its workforce, in seafood processing, they compose 90%.

But protecting workers and punishing abuses is expensive. It also risks making Thailand’s exports pricier. Maybe that’s why the government does neither. The litany of abuses in peeling sheds includes trafficking, forced and child labor, debt bondage and sexual harassment, to name a few, reports the EJF. In Samut Sakhon, a major seafood processing center, 57% of workers surveyed had been subject to forced labor practices, while one-third had been trafficked.

Or perhaps it’s because some officials are complicit, taking bribes or even owning the businesses. EJF spoke with five former employees of a Thai police captain’s peeling shack. All been trafficked into debt bondage; one was 10 years old at the time.

It’s not just shrimp, though. Export competitiveness in fishing, construction, agriculture and manufacturing depends on migrants, says Human Rights Watch (pdf, p.25), an NGO.

This might be expedient now. But Thailand’s labor productivity has stalled (pdf, p.3) because companies grown used to cheap labor aren’t bothering to upgrade their technology. The consequences of this easy fix will become more glaring as 2017, the year Thailand’s working population starts shrinking, approaches.

When Thailand’s working-age population peaks, compared with other Asian countries.
BofA/Merrill Lynch

At that point, as the local population falls, demand for migrants should intensify. That will up their wages, crimping margins, or exacerbate trafficking, which could invite sanctions against Thai exports. And that’s assuming this captive labor pool doesn’t dry up first, as Myanmar’s rapidly liberalizing economy starts to pick up.

Which all means that, at some point soon, Thailand will find a crucial engine of growth sputtering.

qz.com

The shrimp won ton from 711 is bluddy excellent, considering it's harvested by burmese slaves.

sounds like there is a little traction, very little...........

The stigma of HIV/AIDS in Little Burma
CRAIG KNOWLES
16 November 2013


youtube.com

It’s low paid, difficult and often dangerous work. But Thailand’s fishing industry provides employment for tens of thousands of Burmese migrants who have fled their country in search of a better life.

Many of them work in Mahachai – nicknamed Little Burma – 45 kilometers southwest of Bangkok. Most dockworkers here earn the minimum wage of 200 Baht, or six dollars a day.

The workers face numerous hazards. About a third of them are not officially registered, making them targets for harassment by extortion gangs and the authorities.

They are poorly educated and dream of one day returning home. But many of them also enjoy new freedoms that were taboo in their own country, including sexual experimentation and multiple partners. And that makes them vulnerable to HIV, especially the younger workers.

“The majority of HIV infections among Burmese migrant workers is among the 15 to 25-year-olds”, said Zayar Lin from Foundation for Education and Development. “That is because of two reasons, the first being that they want to explore more, the second is the low awareness of HIV and AIDS.”

He said the problem is you don’t really talk about these things in Burma, so when young Burmese come to Thailand, they have lots of opportunities to experiment, but they lack basic knowledge of how to protect themselves from Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). And they don’t know the dangers of HIV.

The Raks Thai Foundation runs a drop-in center, an informal place where Burmese migrants can safely access information about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment.

Here Burmese migrants are shown how to use condoms and protect themselves from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. They can also access peer support services and counseling.

New is a Peer Support Counselor at The Buddy Center.

“They need to know more, so they read information, education and communication pamphlets here so they will learn about the transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, and how to prevent HIV and STIs.”

The center provides services and knowledge that most of the migrant workers and their families did not have access to in Burma, officially known as Myanmar.

Forty-two-year-old Tin Tin Aye has been coming to the center since her husband died of an AIDS-related illness seven years ago.

“I had heard about HIV but I had never seen or used a condom when I was living in Burma,” she said.

Migrant workers can also obtain referrals for health check-ups, treatment and support from a nearby clinic.

But despite Raks Thai being a “safe place” that offers anonymity, many Burmese still fear stigma and discrimination if they contract HIV.

“When they are HIV positive they don’t want to tell their relatives, their husband or their wife, especially when they become very, very ill and nobody takes care of them”, said health advisor Dr Khin Thant Zin. “At that time they come to Raks Thai instead. Usually they are afraid of discrimination and stigma in their community, that’s why they come to us very late.”

International agencies have been working for many years to improve working conditions and legal rights for some 2.5 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, and have made strides in some areas.

Yoshiteru Uramoto is the Asia Pacific Regional Director of International Labour Organisation (ILO). He said that Thailand has done a good job compared to other Asian countries, but thinks the ideal situation would be if the migrant workers get integrated under the social protection scheme.

“Fishing and non-commercial vessels is an area that we need to still give some attention,” he said. “But I think we are very much into introducing some institutional arrangements, legal measures. Humanitarian assistance is important, that’s the start, but we also need to have some institutions to protect migrant workers from all sorts of issues, and HIV is one of them.”

The 11th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP 2013) will be held on 18-23 November 2013, in Bangkok, Thailand. The theme is “Asia/Pacific Reaching Triple Zero: Investing in Innovation”.

dvb.no

Forced to fish: Slavery on Thailand's trawlers
Becky Palmstrom
23 January 2014



Thailand is the third largest exporter of seafood in the world, supplying supermarkets in Europe and America, but it's accused of crewing fishing boats with Burmese and Cambodian men who've been sold and forced to work as slaves.

Military music is pumping out into the tropical sunshine. In front of us are some 100 police officers standing in rows, and two heavily armed SWAT teams standing at attention. General Chatchawal Suksomjit, deputy chief of police, is walking down the lines, shaking hands, nodding and saluting.

With his dark glasses, slicked-back hair and shiny grey uniform he oozes importance.

He ushers us on to some waiting police boats and out into the waters of the Malacca Straits, along the border with Malaysia.

If people aren't useful on board, they can be killed and thrown overboard”

Phil Robertson Human Rights Watch

The general is head of a new committee set up to deal with the trafficking of men into the fishing business - an industry he describes as "dirty, dangerous and difficult".

Human rights groups claim the Thai fishing fleet is much worse than this. Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a report on it for the International Organization for Migration says the use of forced labour is "systematic" and "pervasive".

"The biggest problem we've seen is that if people can't work, people aren't useful on board, they can be killed and thrown overboard," he says. "It doesn't happen on every boat but it does happen enough to raise serious questions about the lawlessness in this industry."


General Chatchawal Suksomjit, on patrol in the Malacca Straits

There is also a recruitment crisis. By the Ministry of Labour's count, fishing boats in Thailand are short of 50,000 men. One captain at the port of Chonburi says they are desperate.

"Because Thai fishing is difficult, some people we have to force on to the boat," he says.

Many boat owners and captains rely on brokers to recruit their workers, but the brokers are often unscrupulous, tricking young men from neighbouring countries into a job from which there is no escape.

As the police boats charge out towards the border with Malaysia, we approach four battered fishing boats. The SWAT teams surge on to the deck of the first boat, but meet no resistance.

"The focus of the mission today is to find trafficked and forced labour," announces the general in Thai, before ordering the mainly Burmese crew down on to the deck. The crew have holes in their shirts or no shirts at all. Most are barefoot. We slide around on the nets, scales and fish guts on the deck.

When I talk in Burmese they speak quietly, glancing nervously at the captain and the crew master.

One group say they didn't know they were coming on to a boat when they left Rakhine State in the west of Burma, or Myanmar as it is also known.

They owe a broker $750 (£450) for bringing them here. One man glances out from under a mop of salt-soaked hair. "It's been seven months," he says. He still hasn't been paid.

With my basic Burmese and the crew's reluctance to talk, it's hard to assess the situation but brokers, deception and debt often go hand-in-hand with forced labour.



Typically an illegal worker from Cambodia or Burma meets a broker and is offered a factory job. He accepts and finds himself passed from one broker to another, taken to a port and put on a fishing boat. The victim is then told he owes a lot of money.

It's a well-sprung trap. If he escapes, then as an undocumented migrant the police will arrest and deport him. One Cambodian man I spoke to was trapped for three years on a boat without any wages, while he "paid off his debt". He was never told how much he owed.

The general and his team cannot talk directly to the Burmese-speaking crew because they haven't brought a translator so determining whether the men are trafficked is not possible. After 20 minutes the general ushers us off the boat.

Anyone who tried to escape had their legs broken, their hands broken or were even killed”

Ken Former fisherman

"Wouldn't it make your job easier to have a translator?" I ask. He replies that usually they rely on someone on board who can speak Burmese, such as the crew master. However, it's often the crew master who is accused of the worst cases of abuse and violence.

"How do you know there was no forced labour or trafficking here?" I ask.
"From what we saw, there was no lock-up or detention room," he says. "We saw no signs of harm on their bodies or in their facial expressions. By looking into their faces and their eyes they didn't look like they had been forced to work."

It didn't seem like a foolproof system.

When the authorities do rescue trafficked men they often end up in a government-run detention centre on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Ken is one of these men. He explains that he was promised a good job in a factory but was forced on to a tiny boat in the open sea where he fished 20 hours a day, seven days a week. When he talks, his rough fingers run over the word L.O.V.E, which is clumsily tattooed across his knuckles. The broker said Ken owed a lot of money for being found a job and taken to the port. Months passed but Ken, like so many others, was never paid.

"People said, anyone who tried to escape had their legs broken, their hands broken or were even killed," he says.

Desperate to escape, Ken jumped ship and swam for six hours in the open sea, until he was picked up by a yacht and dropped off in the resort of Pattaya. Like many trafficked men, he felt ashamed to return home empty-handed so when the police found him and deported him, he crossed the border illegally again to find work in Thailand.



This time he was told there was a job for him in a pineapple canning factory, and he agreed. But there was no factory, just another boat and another insurmountable debt. Fortunately for him, other crew-members managed to smuggle a phone on board to call for help and he was rescued as part of a special operation by Thailand's Department of Special Investigations.

Puntrik Smiti, the Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Labour, admits that men like Ken are vulnerable. "There are some good fishing operators who are trying to improve the treatment of workers," she says. "The problem is there are small operators who are unregistered and don't want to come into the system."


Ken's boat arrives in port, after the crew phoned for help

Only one in six boats is registered, she says, and most of the workers are illegal. She also points out that existing labour laws are inadequate. In fact Thailand's Labour Protection Act exempts workers employed in the fishing industry, while other ministerial regulations exclude boats with a crew of less than 20, or those that travel outside Thai waters for more than a year.
Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says it is on these long-haul boats that the worst abuses take place.

"If you're talking about a fish caught on a Thai boat that has gone overseas, that has gone to Malaysian waters, Indonesian waters or further afield, you're definitely talking about a fish tainted with forced labour," he says.

"If you're talking about a fish caught in Thai waters, the chances might be less. But there are much fewer fish caught that way. And now the major exporting is coming from the overseas catch."

The effect of local over-fishing is forcing Thai boats to go as far afield as Yemen to maintain an export business worth $7bn annually. Mother ships refuel boats far from shore and transfer crews, ice and fish at sea.


Ken has been learning to cut hair in the detention centre

Trapped at sea, workers cannot escape or complain about their conditions. The system also muddies the supply chain because fish are mixed at sea, and often again at the ports and processing plants, before being sold to larger companies for export. Max Tunon of the International Labour Organisation, who published a report on the industry in September, says it is "close to impossible" to disentangle Thailand's fish supply chains.

Consumer pressure may one day force the industry to make these supply chains more transparent. Mackerel, sardines and other Thai fish are bought by some Western supermarkets and restaurants, while household brands such as John West and Chicken of the Sea are both subsidiaries of the largest exporter of Thai seafood, the Thai Union Group.

For its part, the Thai Union Group says it only sources fish from boats that are properly registered, with crews that have proper working documents. A representative says the company works with its partners to "take meaningful steps to promote human rights" in all its business operations. Mackerel and sardines accounted for only 6% of its revenue in 2012. Tuna is caught by a different fleet of boats.



A few days later in Burma, we sit on the floor of a bamboo shack in Bago, 100km (60 miles) north of Rangoon. This is Ken's home. Although idyllic, the poverty is palpable.

Ken's parents haven't heard anything from their son, who is now 32, for four years.



His father is thin, with a gaunt face and red teeth from chewing betel nut. His mother is plumper and has a comb holding up her grey hair.

I show them a video of Ken. "That's him! That's my son," his mother cries in recognition.

She raises her hands to her face and weeps, while her husband places his hand close to hers.

"We didn't know anything," she says. "We heard nothing."

"I am so happy, so happy," Ken's father says, unable to tear his red-rimmed eyes from the screen.

It's hard to know just how many more families like Ken's are waiting for sons and husbands trapped at sea. With some vessels spending months or even years away, without being checked, the system encourages abuse.

Ultimately, as one fishing boat captain told us, if the Burma or Cambodian economies boom and there are jobs for men back home, the Thai fishing fleet will be in trouble.

This could also force the industry to change its ways, quite aside from any consumer pressure. For now though, the flow of men trafficked into slavery on fishing boats continues.

bbc.co.uk

Burmese Workers in Thailand Win Landmark Rights Agreement
Saturday, January 25, 2014

A group of Burmese workers at a major fish processing factory in Thailand have successfully negotiated pay and employment rights which could become a model for the huge migrant worker sector, said the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF).

The Thai shrimp canning industry based around Samut Sakhorn, south of Bangkok, employs large numbers of Burmese, but many are facing wage cuts or being fired because of a disease which is decimating shrimping farms.

With the support of the ILRF and the Migrant Workers Rights Network, a worker group has negotiated with their employers in the first cooperation of its kind in the tough industry, said ILRF representative Abby Mills in a statement.

“Workers agreed to an additional day off and a monthly support payment that makes up for about 50% of the lost wages. No worker will be fired,” Mills said.

“The most significant outcome, however, was that a labor committee would have official standing within the factory and be composed of representatives the workers select themselves.

“This is an outstanding model for the industry, and one that should be followed by others,” Mills said.

The shrimp processing company which reached the agreement has not been named.

irrawaddy.org

Good program last night well worth a listen.
BBC iPlayer - Freedom 2014: Thailand?s Slave Fishermen

The slaves who live and die on Thailand’s fishing boats
Sunday 16 Feb 2014


You could, with justification, call it hell on earth.

But this poisonous practice takes place far from land, on the tepid seas of South East Asia. It is called slavery and it has not gone away. In fact, there are thousands of slaves currently working and dying on Thai fishing boats.

If that sounds shocking, let me tell you how it works: men from impoverished communities in Cambodia and Burma depart for Thailand every year, looking for work in factories, plantations or the fields. The experts call them “irregular migrants” – men without passports or proper papers, willing to travel great distances in order to provide for their families at home.

Unscrupulous brokers and human traffickers meet them at the border and offer what sounds like an unbeatable deal – a route into Thailand and a job once they get there. However, it is a well-worked trick.

In reality, these unlucky men have been are sold, for a couple of hundred dollars each, to the owners of Thai fishing boats. Typically, the lie is revealed as the boat leaves the shore and the coastline fades from view.

Seafood is big business in Thailand – it’s now the third largest exporter in the world, supplying supermarkets in Europe and America. But the fishing fleet is chronically short of crew – by the government’s own estimation 50,000 additional labourers are required.

These modern-day slaves help make up the difference and unsurprisingly, boat owners give little thought to conditions on board. Captives work 20-hour days with little food or fresh water and they are beaten if they resist.

Injuries go untreated and those unable to work are often thrown overboard.

We know an increasing amount about the brutal situation on these vessels because of the work done by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and American film-maker Alex Willson, who have interviewed dozens of former captives about their experiences on the slave ships.

A young man called Amusa for example, was forced to spend seven years on a fishing boat and thought he would die at sea. “When we did something wrong they beat us until we lost consciousness,” he said.

“If you compete with them or fight with them they will kill and throw you in the water.” Another fisherman, Vorn, was held for nine years. “There were 30 people working on the boat and we worked without food or sleep. Even when we were sick, we couldn’t relax or sleep. We had to work.”

Still, captives have found a variety of ways to escape – like swimming great distances to shore – and there are a number of charities and other groups who stand ready to assist them.



The IOM has helped rescue 324 Cambodians over the last few years and you can see and hear more from some of these reluctant fishermen in our special report.

If you are wondering what the government of Thailand is doing about all this, they have proposed a series of measures including an official registration system for potential workers and employers, although little concrete action has been taken.

What Thai diplomats did do however, was try to block to the publication of Alex Willson’s interviews on the internet in an attempt to save the nation from being tarred with the noxious brush of slavery.

Their efforts have failed however, and we should all be glad because these unfortunate men speak for thousands and thousands of others.

blogs.channel4.com

Thai fishing sector 'abuses' migrants
4/03/2014

BANGKOK - An environmental and human rights group says Thailand is not adequately addressing the severe abuse of Myanmar migrant workers in the Thai fishing industry.

The British-based Environmental Justice Foundation said in its report released Tuesday that the Thai government has failed to act strongly against human trafficking and that violence is routine in the industry.

Labour Ministry deputy permanent secretary Boontharik Samiti said on Tuesday the government is making a serious effort to protect workers in the fishing industry.

The foundation suggested the United States consider imposing economic sanctions on Thailand for making inadequate efforts against human trafficking.

Thailand is the third-biggest seafood exporter after China and Norway.

bangkokpost.com

Six Burmese Migrants Rescued From Thai Fishing Industry Trafficking
NYEIN NYEIN
Tuesday, March 4, 2014


Migrant workers from Burma work on a fishing boat before sailing out of the port of Mahachai, near Bangkok, on Feb. 23, 2010.
(Photo: Reuters / Damir Sagolj)

Six Burmese migrants forced to work in the Thai fishing industry were rescued from human traffickers on Monday night by local law enforcement in southern Thailand’s Kantang district.

The Thai police’s anti-trafficking unit and a Bangkok-based Burmese civil society group rescued the men, all aged 25 or older, from a fishing boat that had docked at the port city of Trang on the Malay Peninsula, about 860 kilometers south of Bangkok, according to Kyaw Thaung, director of the Myanmar Association Thailand (MAT).

“We were contacted by these men over a month ago, and only when they came to the dock were we able to rescue them, at about 11pm on March 3,” he said. “But we still need to rescue one man from the boat.”

Kyaw Thaung said the six men were being held for questioning at the local police station prior to their deportation. “Letting them stay in the police station is for their security as the brokers and bosses could target them for talking to police,” he said, adding that none of the rescued Burmese nationals was carrying legal documents.

The six men are from at least three different townships in western Burma’s Arakan State.

One of the rescued laborers, who asked that his name be withheld, said he arrived to Thailand in October 2013, lured by what turned out to be a false promise of a job working on the docks at a salary equivalent to 350,000 kyats (US$357) per month.

“Actually, when I arrived, there was no job at the dock. Instead I had to work on the fishing boats at sea,” the man said, adding that a broker who arranged the deal had demanded a 300,000 kyats fee for his services.

Efforts to track down the accused broker have not yet been successful.

Reports of laborers facing torture and other boat workers driven to suicide have sullied the reputation of the Thai fishing industry, which is heavily dependent on migrant workers.

The anonymous rescued migrant worker appeared to be among the latest victims of an industry ripe for exploitation by human traffickers.

“I was beaten when I refused to do the job which was not agreed to,” he said.

“I started working on Oct. 2, 2013, and returned to the docks three times [within five months]. Each time the head laborer gave me less than 300 baht [$10] to use during our stay of two days,” he said, adding that he had also checked with his family to find out if they had received any type of payment and was informed that they had not.

He said the fishing boat he was working aboard employed 15 people, only six of whom were detained by Thai authorities to await deportation. All but one other laborer possessed the necessary legal documents to work in Thailand and voluntarily returned to the fishing vessel.

Despite many stories of Burmese migrants exploited by employers or brokers in Thailand, many continue to seek work in the neighboring Southeast Asian nation, where they view job prospects as better. Upon arrival to the Kingdom, however, many find that the workplace environment and or the nature of the job differs from what they were originally offered.

The MAT intervened in 11 cases of trafficking in persons last year, rescuing a total of 82 people working in industries ranging from fishing to manufacturing, and as domestic helpers or sex workers. This week’s bust was the association’s first of 2014.

There are estimated 3 million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, where some 1.7 million of them are officially registered. But for many, four-year work visas have been expiring over the last eight months, and workers’ rights advocates say the migrants are facing a legal limbo that makes them vulnerable to exploitation by Thai authorities, employers or human traffickers.

irrawaddy.org

Fisheries Department urges fishing businesses to register aliens by May
Namo Vananupong

BANGKOK, 18 April 2014 (NNT) – The Fisheries Department is urging fishing boat operators to register their foreign workers by the end of May.

Niwat Suthimichaikun, director-general of the Department of Fisheries, indicated that he had told the fisheries offices in all 22 coastal provinces to pro-actively publicize the invitation for fishing vessel operators and fisheries businesses to register their illegal alien workers at the Fisheries Department's 7 labor coordination centers or at the Employment Department offices in the 22 coastal provinces.

The Fisheries Department was also collaborating with other agencies to provide mobile registration units to help with registration of alien labor.

According to Mr. Niwat, the Cabinet made endorsement on August 6, 2013 for fisheries operators to register their labor twice a year – once during March and May and again during October and December.

thainews.prd.go.th

kudos to mid for being way out in front on this story.