Updated
Tens of thousands of illegal migrants are trafficked across borders in and through Thailand, especially from Burma, Laos and Cambodia.
In a report about trafficked people released this year, the US State Department placed Thailand in the same category as Afghanistan, Cambodia, Russia and Zambia.
Over one million migrants come from Burma to work in Thailand - many illegally and many under a recent policy to provide official employment documentation.
Presenter: Ron Corben
Speaker: Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, UN Special Rapporteur on human trafficking; Nai, Burmese man; Andy Hall, a researcher with the Institute of Population and Social Research at Bangkok's Mahidol University
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CORBEN: Nai a 25-year-old Burmese man came to Thailand six years ago in a bid to pay off debts after his shrimp business failed in southern Burma.
To make the journey requires a broker or front man. He is paid. In turn he lends the trafficked person monies for transport in Thailand. Nai says this loan is repaid at exorbitant rates.
NAI (voiceover translation): The front man says he is going to give you for example 10,000 baht and when you get into Thailand that's your fees for transportation then after a few months the person has to give them back 20,000 baht or 30,000 baht. That's a good front man. Because there's also bad people who just like then these people come in as soon as these people come in they just sell them as soon as they come in because they are illegal immigrants.
CORBEN: Nai tells how in one factory the manager carried guns and threatened the workers. Nai escaped. Nai is now among over 300,000 Burmese working in the seafood industry in Samut Sakon province near Bangkok. Burmese language signs at the market are a testament to the Burmese in the community.
Andy Hall, a researcher with the Institute of Population and Social Research (IPSR) at Bangkok's Mahidol University says while Thailand has in place laws and rehabilitation programs for migrant workers, the illegal migrant business is riddled with corruption.
HALL: Migrant workers when they are trafficked or smuggled into Thailand they just don't walk across borders, they don't just walk across rivers, they are put into a very complex process whereby they arrive in Bangkok and other cities in Thailand. This involves a very complex network of criminals, traffickers, smugglers including officials, law enforcement agencies and a number of different actors. So essentially what we have today is a situation where trafficking networks continue to flourish in Thailand.
CORBEN: The United Nations estimates around 2.5 million people from 127 countries are trafficked into more than 130 countries each year. The International Labor Organisation says human trafficking is worth around $30 billion a year to criminal gangs.
Nigerian activist, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, the UN's special rapporteur on human trafficking says on a global scale the illegal trade is growing.
EZEILO: There are certain push and pull factors that make people vulnerable to human trafficking. Sometime it's to show exclusion, sometimes you find that it's ethnicity have something to do with it, a particular race, a minority and then against the divide which will also bring a lot of disparity in terms of infrastructure - all of these contributing factors, the push and pull factors why people become vulnerable to human trafficking.
CORBEN: How do you convey, how do governments convey messages to traffickers that they're unwelcome in terms of the business they are in and preventing genuine migrants from making their way.
EZEILO: That's why I recommend seriously that restricting migration policy is not the answer. We have to create the opportunities for safe migration so that can get people like if we need certain skills that you provide that and then the system is open; its transparent. So some of these things are becoming very unfortunately highly politicised in many counties of the world and that is also creating the tension and all kinds of xenophobic approach to issues of migrants.
CORBEN: Ms Ezeilo is in Thailand on an official visit to assess Thailand's efforts to deal with human trafficking. She is scheduled to travel to Australia in November for talks on Canberra's migration and refugee policies.
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