SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand — “The broker took 36,000 baht (US $1,200) from us,” says Ma Than Nwe, a Tavoyan Burmese migrant worker in Thailand. “It was money that should have been paid to my husband,” she laments.
Her spouse *Kyaw spent six months at sea on a Thai-run fishing vessel and the salary, which might seem a pittance to some, is a small fortune for people who earned the equivalent of $1-2 per day in Burma. Or it would be, if it was paid at all. The promised 6,000 baht ($200) per month was paid to a broker, a Burmese woman who cannot be named at this time for legal reasons. She kept the all money as payment for what Ma Than Nwe—with understandable anger—sarcastically describes as the broker's “services” in helping her husband “find work” on the boat.
The broker and alleged trafficker and extortionist has since fled back to Burma. “We were afraid to do anything, as the police and the brokers work together to get money from us,” Ma Than Nwe says. “But we think she has angered some other people as well,” she adds, speculating on the broker's apparent flight from Thailand.
The broker told the couple that Kyaw would only have to work two months on the fishing vessel to clear the broker's fee. Anything else after that, if he chose to stay on board for longer, would be his. However, he was kept on the boat against his will for six months and emerged without being paid a single baht.
“The boat did not come to shore during all that time,” says Ma Than Nwe. “When he got back, he told me how small boats would come to meet them at sea and take the catch to land, so they did not get to come ashore themselves.”
Such tales of deceit, naivete and brutality are legion in Thailand's fishing industry and in the coastal province of Samut Sakhon—perhaps better known by its old name Mahachai—a forty-minute drive west of the Thai capital, Bangkok. Thailand's fishing sector and this particular location have both long been a draw for immigrants from neighboring countries seeking work away from their own sluggish economies.
The United Nations special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, begins an official visit to Thailand today to examine the impact of anti-trafficking measures in the country. She will stay until Aug 19 and visit Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Mae Sot, Samut Sakhon and Songkhla, where she will likely hear stories such as that of Ma Than Nwe and her husband.
“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 national laws, policies and measures related to trafficking in persons,” she said.
Ezeilo will have to convince Thai authorities to do more to enforce anti-trafficking laws, as—according to a recent US State Department assessment of global human trafficking—Thailand has “made mixed progress in its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts.”
According to the US report, the Thai government “reported 18 convictions in trafficking-related cases in 2010—an increase from eight known convictions during the previous year; as of May 2011, only five of the 18 convictions reported by the government could be confirmed to be for trafficking offenses.”
However, as the report later outlines, the fishing industry and its locales remain at the margins of even this relatively small conviction rate. According to the report, “investigations of alleged human trafficking on Thai fishing boats, as well as inspections of these boats, were practically nonexistent, according to surveyed fisherman, NGOs, and government officials.”
Ma Than Nwe herself was trafficked, forced to work at shrimp factory in Samut Sakhon for a 200 baht ($6.70) day rate.
Image via WikipediaBy Matthew Schoener Posted: 03/21/2011 
IHC orders the release of illegally detained brick-kiln workers in Dhok Makhna
ISLAMABAD: A court bailiff on Friday freed 22 brick-kiln workers who were put under illegal detention and subjected to physical abuse by their employers, in violation of fundamental human rights.
On the direction of Islamabad High Court Chief (IHC) Justice Iqbal Hameedur Rehman, the bailiff managed to recover the workers from Dhok Makhna on the outskirts of Islamabad.
Muhammad Ashraf, a relative of the workers, filed a writ petition in the IHC challenging their detention at the hands of five brick-kiln owners.
According to the petitioner’s counsel, Mian Sohail Ahmed, the illiterate workers had made a three-year oral employment agreement with the owners which began on August 2007.
According to the agreement, they were to be paid Rs350 for every 1,000 bricks that they made. However, the owners did not honour their part of the bargain and reduced the wage to Rs150 within the first six months.
When the agreement ended in August 2010, the workers, including men and women, were forcefully detained by the brick-kiln owners. From then on, after being made to work from 4am till 6pm every day, they were locked up in a room and forbidden from even meeting their relatives.
Any requests to be let out or paid more were met by brutal torture and verbal abuse, visible marks of which were shown to the court when the workers were produced for hearing. The workers were also denied medical treatment. Ahmed said the Punjab government in 2008 set the minimum wage at Rs442 per 1,000 bricks.
Source: Published in The Express Tribune, February 19th, 2011.
