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Showing posts with label Thai fishing industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thai fishing industry. Show all posts
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Friday, April 10, 2015
Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery | Asia | DW.DE | 09.04.2015
In a DW interview, Annette Lyth, Regional Project Manager at the United Nations Action for Cooperation against Trafficking in Persons, explains how widespread forced labor is across Southeast Asia and why the governments in the region are struggling to put an end to the practice.
Read MORE
Why Southeast Asia struggles to tackle modern-day slavery | Asia | DW.DE | 09.04.2015:
Friday, September 6, 2013
BANGKOK: Study finds dire work conditions on Thai trawlers | World | Kentucky.com
Source: Kentucky.com
"BANGKOK — Some workers are forced onto Thai fishing boats by their families, others by unscrupulous employment brokers. Nearly half the workers make less than $160 a month in exchange for back-breaking labor. Some might not see any money at all."
Continue here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/02/2800196/study-finds-dire-work-conditions.html
"BANGKOK — Some workers are forced onto Thai fishing boats by their families, others by unscrupulous employment brokers. Nearly half the workers make less than $160 a month in exchange for back-breaking labor. Some might not see any money at all."
Continue here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/09/02/2800196/study-finds-dire-work-conditions.html
Friday, August 9, 2013
Phuket warned human-trafficking record may result in European ban on seafood
Source: Phuket Gazette -
Friday, August 9, 2013 10:37:00 AM
http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket_news/2013/Phuket-warned-human-trafficking-record-may-result-in-European-ban-on-seafood-21903.html
Friday, August 9, 2013 10:37:00 AM
http://www.phuketgazette.net/phuket_news/2013/Phuket-warned-human-trafficking-record-may-result-in-European-ban-on-seafood-21903.html
[TRAFFICKING MONITOR: Access images via URL above.]
PHUKET: Any deterioration in Thailand’s human-trafficking record may lead to a European ban on importing seafood from the Kingdom, Phuket Marine Police were warned yesterday.
The message was delivered at a seminar intended to remind local Marine Police and those involved in Phuket’s fishing industry of the legal obligations to be upheld regarding human trafficking.
The seminar, headed by visiting senior prosecutor Kittipong Teeranatthapong, was held at the Phuket Marine Police Station in Phuket Town.
“The European Union has an index for nations whose fishing industries are corrupted by human trafficking. Under the system, Q1 is Good, Q2 is Medium and Q3 is Bad,” Marine Police Region 8 Deputy Superintendent Lt Col Prasert Srikunrat explained to his officers.
“Right now Thailand qualifies as -Q2, but that might drop to Q3 in the future. That will affect our fishing product exports because Europe will say no to them if the situation worsens,” he said.
“We want the European Union to have more confidence in Thailand, so we have to raise our standards and really prove that we take a strong line against human trafficking,” Col Prasert added.
“We want to make sure that Phuket does not have any human trafficking corrupting the fishing industry here,” he affirmed.
PHUKET: Any deterioration in Thailand’s human-trafficking record may lead to a European ban on importing seafood from the Kingdom, Phuket Marine Police were warned yesterday.
The message was delivered at a seminar intended to remind local Marine Police and those involved in Phuket’s fishing industry of the legal obligations to be upheld regarding human trafficking.
The seminar, headed by visiting senior prosecutor Kittipong Teeranatthapong, was held at the Phuket Marine Police Station in Phuket Town.
“The European Union has an index for nations whose fishing industries are corrupted by human trafficking. Under the system, Q1 is Good, Q2 is Medium and Q3 is Bad,” Marine Police Region 8 Deputy Superintendent Lt Col Prasert Srikunrat explained to his officers.
“Right now Thailand qualifies as -Q2, but that might drop to Q3 in the future. That will affect our fishing product exports because Europe will say no to them if the situation worsens,” he said.
“We want the European Union to have more confidence in Thailand, so we have to raise our standards and really prove that we take a strong line against human trafficking,” Col Prasert added.
“We want to make sure that Phuket does not have any human trafficking corrupting the fishing industry here,” he affirmed.
– Saran Mitrarat
|
Phuket, Thailand10:37 local time (GMT +7 |
Thailand arrests suspected leader of human trafficking gang
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Pairat Temphairojana reports that "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."
Continue reading here:
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
The slavery behind our seafood
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1596323/the_slavery_behind_our_seafood.html
Source: The Ecologist
Some Burmese migrants have been found to suffer exploitation and abuse whilst working on Thai fishing vessels. Photo: Jim Wickens/Ecostorm
Source: The Ecologist
Jim Wickens
20th September, 2012
Burmese migrants working onboard Thai fishing boats suffer brutal exploitation. And the boats involved supply so-called 'trash fish' for use in feed given to farmed prawns exported globally. The Ecologist Film Unit's Jim Wickens reports
Some Burmese migrants have been found to suffer exploitation and abuse whilst working on Thai fishing vessels. Photo: Jim Wickens/Ecostorm
It is a dark and dingy motel on the Burmese border. We are thousands of miles from the UK high street, but the food we consume in Britain is linked to the voices that are we about to hear. Ushered through the rain, coats over heads and moving through the shadows, the figures enter our room. They are Burmese fishermen, and they are risking their lives to talk to us as part of the film Grinding Nemo.
Thailand's fishing industry, one of the largest in the world, is worth in excess of $4 billion each year. Much of the fish caught at sea is frozen, exported and consumed around the world, whilst some vessels catch so-called 'trash fish' which is turned into fish meal used to feed prawns which are in turn exported to supermarkets in the UK and elsewhere.
Most of the fishermen onboard the vessels are Burmese. According to Human Rights Watch up to 250 000 Burmese migrants may work within the Thai fishing industry, with little or no rights at all. An invisible work force that, experts claim, are being brutally exploited to toil onboard Thai fishing fleets.
Like many before him, Wai Yan fled Burma in search of a better life. At the age of 16 he was recruited onto a Thai fishing boat, beckoned by the promise of high wages. But once onboard the vessel, it would be two years before he was to see land again.
'Everytime I saw the mother ship come, I would cry because I wanted to go home. But I couldn’t because they wouldn't let me,' he told the Ecologist.
Taken to fish hundreds of miles out at sea in the Indian ocean, he was continually trafficked between vessels, his only contact with the outside world a supply boat that would bring food and fuel and carry the fish back to Thai ports.
Thailand's fishing industry, one of the largest in the world, is worth in excess of $4 billion each year. Much of the fish caught at sea is frozen, exported and consumed around the world, whilst some vessels catch so-called 'trash fish' which is turned into fish meal used to feed prawns which are in turn exported to supermarkets in the UK and elsewhere.
Most of the fishermen onboard the vessels are Burmese. According to Human Rights Watch up to 250 000 Burmese migrants may work within the Thai fishing industry, with little or no rights at all. An invisible work force that, experts claim, are being brutally exploited to toil onboard Thai fishing fleets.
Like many before him, Wai Yan fled Burma in search of a better life. At the age of 16 he was recruited onto a Thai fishing boat, beckoned by the promise of high wages. But once onboard the vessel, it would be two years before he was to see land again.
'Everytime I saw the mother ship come, I would cry because I wanted to go home. But I couldn’t because they wouldn't let me,' he told the Ecologist.
Taken to fish hundreds of miles out at sea in the Indian ocean, he was continually trafficked between vessels, his only contact with the outside world a supply boat that would bring food and fuel and carry the fish back to Thai ports.
Malnutrition & killings
'In those years I got to sleep around 4 hours each day. The captain would carry a gun with him all the time so we didn't dare to say no to him. It was a very hard life, I got skinny and weak from malnutrition. I got seasick all the time, I had to work as much as they wanted me too. I often had a suicidal though during those time. The only reason that I was be able to come back is because the boat start to leak. I didn’t have any mobile phone, no way of communication. All I knew and saw was the sea itself.'
'But we didn’t dare to claim our salary,' he says. 'One of my friend said have you seen all of these anonymous dead body floating around near by the port? Those are the people that complain.'
Wai Yan is not alone. Fellow Burmese migrant Nyan described typical working conditions: 'When working, we invest our whole life, we are in their hands and there is nothing we can do about it. when given orders we have to follow..we have to eat when they say, sleep when they say. There absolutely no excuse for anything. It's really bad. When I made mistakes sorting the fish, they would hit me with a metal stick. They even tried to shoot me,' Nyan says.
Working undercover, the Ecologist managed to gain access to several trawlers fishing offshore. We were shown typical tiny living quarters consisting of crudely-slatted boards for sleeping set under waist-high ceilings, bare but for a few items of clothing, rusty knives and the fitted ship horns ready to wake the crew for the round-the-clock toil of sorting the catches.
We were told of captains force-feeding amphetamines to half-starved crew members, the routine killing of crew who complain, and Burmese migrants leaping from the backs of vessels in suicidal bids to escape the torment of life at sea.
One man we spoke to described a killing he witnessed: 'The captain took his gun and shot him until he fell off the boat. He fell in the gap between the two boats. he didn't die right away, he tried to come up, but the captain just gave him another shot until he sank away..I've seen this happen twice', he said.
'But we didn’t dare to claim our salary,' he says. 'One of my friend said have you seen all of these anonymous dead body floating around near by the port? Those are the people that complain.'
Wai Yan is not alone. Fellow Burmese migrant Nyan described typical working conditions: 'When working, we invest our whole life, we are in their hands and there is nothing we can do about it. when given orders we have to follow..we have to eat when they say, sleep when they say. There absolutely no excuse for anything. It's really bad. When I made mistakes sorting the fish, they would hit me with a metal stick. They even tried to shoot me,' Nyan says.
Working undercover, the Ecologist managed to gain access to several trawlers fishing offshore. We were shown typical tiny living quarters consisting of crudely-slatted boards for sleeping set under waist-high ceilings, bare but for a few items of clothing, rusty knives and the fitted ship horns ready to wake the crew for the round-the-clock toil of sorting the catches.
We were told of captains force-feeding amphetamines to half-starved crew members, the routine killing of crew who complain, and Burmese migrants leaping from the backs of vessels in suicidal bids to escape the torment of life at sea.
One man we spoke to described a killing he witnessed: 'The captain took his gun and shot him until he fell off the boat. He fell in the gap between the two boats. he didn't die right away, he tried to come up, but the captain just gave him another shot until he sank away..I've seen this happen twice', he said.
The supermarket link
Thai fishing fleets trawl the rich coastline areas of the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman sea. During this investigation crew members in some of the largest ports told theEcologist how the fleets routinely fish illegally in the waters of other countries, most commonly in Burma and Malaysia, but also as far as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and even Australia.
Out of sight and out of mind, illegal, unregulated and untraceable fishing fleets often use destructive fishing gear to wreak havoc on the marine ecosystems across South East Asia in the lucrative hunt for ever more fish and 'trash fish' destined for feedstuffs that is ultimately linked to western supermarket shelves.
Alongside the concern over illegal fishing, there is an equally challenging task for fish suppliers and governments who want to make the food we eat more sustainable.
Out of sight and out of mind, illegal, unregulated and untraceable fishing fleets often use destructive fishing gear to wreak havoc on the marine ecosystems across South East Asia in the lucrative hunt for ever more fish and 'trash fish' destined for feedstuffs that is ultimately linked to western supermarket shelves.
Alongside the concern over illegal fishing, there is an equally challenging task for fish suppliers and governments who want to make the food we eat more sustainable.
'Labour conditions in the fishing industry represents the next big challenge to organisations that want seafood to be sustainable and ethical. There are numerous instances of appalling labor conditions on fishing boats - in both developed and developing countries - and yet none of the current certification schemes address this problem', says Blake Lee Harwood from the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, an organisation which works closely with the retail industry trying to improve the sustainability of fishing practices around the world.
Bur campaigners claim that efforts by NGOs and retailers have so far only really focused on the processing plants rather than what is happening out at sea. Until this final hurdle is addressed, they claim, the fate of the thousands of Burmese migrants currently at sea continues to hang in the balance.
The names of the Burmese fishermen interviewed for this article have been changed to protect their identity
Bur campaigners claim that efforts by NGOs and retailers have so far only really focused on the processing plants rather than what is happening out at sea. Until this final hurdle is addressed, they claim, the fate of the thousands of Burmese migrants currently at sea continues to hang in the balance.
The names of the Burmese fishermen interviewed for this article have been changed to protect their identity
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Motherships in the abyss, Thailand and forced labor | Alaska Dispatch
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/forced-labor-seafood-industry
Source: Alaska Dispatch
Patrick Winn | GlobalPost.com | May 21, 2012
SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand, and PREY VENG, Cambodia — The laundering begins in a sub-zero chamber floating far from civilization. It is filled with heaps of fish, and men dressed like eskimos.
Source: Alaska Dispatch
Patrick Winn | GlobalPost.com | May 21, 2012
SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand, and PREY VENG, Cambodia — The laundering begins in a sub-zero chamber floating far from civilization. It is filled with heaps of fish, and men dressed like eskimos.
This is the fridge room on a vessel known as a “mothership.” These hulking vessels serve as deep-sea resupply stations for trawlers seeking fuel, meat, medicine, spare parts and even laborers to replace men lost at sea.
The ship’s most important function, however, is receiving wild catch into its icy bowels and ferrying it to onshore fishmongers. Some motherships and fishing boats operate under the same syndicate. Motherships that don't collect a fee for transporting catch to the buyer, typically a fishmonger stationed at a specific dock. Once a squid or sardine comes aboard the mothership, there is almost no way to know whether it was netted by paid fishermen or sea slaves.
“Motherships have freezing capacity to hold high-value fish for long periods of time,” said Lisa Rende Taylor, chief technical specialist with the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking. “The fish is taken back to Thai ports for sale and, most likely, export if the fish is of high value.”
“The boat that caught it may or may not have used slave labor,” she said. “There’s just no way to know who actually caught these fish because of the way unregistered boats work with motherships many kilometers away from the shore.”
Most of the fisheries supply chain between the US and Thailand, America’s second-largest supplier of foreign seafood, can be traced. These are the links that can’t.
Slavery in Thailand’s deep-sea fishing trade is an open secret, acknowledged by the US, the UN and some within the Thai government. It is not all-pervasive. Thailand's biggest seafood export, shrimp, is sourced from coastal farms subject to spot checks. Most "Thai" tuna, the nation's second-largest seafood export, is actually imported from abroad and processed for re-export.
But in the wild-caught seafood industry, forced labor persists because the first crucial supply-chain steps — catch and transport — take place in a lawless, saltwater abyss.
“It’s brutal out there,” said Bpa Ouan, a fishing syndicate chief based in Samut Sakhon, the Thai seafood industry’s industrial hub. His name is a nom de guerre that means “Poppa Fatty.”
“The law is soft,” he said. “We have to handle problems ourselves.”
Overfishing in Thai waters has drawn the nation’s vessels into increasingly distant seas. A UN report estimates that 40 percent of Thailand’s seafood output is caught in foreign territory. Thai vessels now ply the near waters of Malaysia and Indonesia as well as the far seas by Bangladesh and even Somalia.
Bpa Ouan, now 50, began as a 16-year-old deckhand. Later, as a captain, he earned a reputation for fearlessness by illegally trawling Vietnamese waters in the 1990s.
“Their navy sucked but they’d always fire on sight,” he said. “I saw lots of guys get shot up. They’d wait until we anchored and start blasting. You’d have to yank the anchor quick or just cut it and tear out of there.”
The trade has always rewarded men who inspire fear and obedience. Before he swore off alcohol, Bpa Ouan boozed for free in Thailand’s port-side karaoke dens. As a syndicate boss, he now administers rewards and punishments, payments and fees. He is surrounded by tattooed bruisers who call him “daddy," an honorific for powerful men in Thailand.
“I’m like the master and they are my students,” said Bpa Ouan, his coiffed hair tinged with pewter-gray streaks. “They’re like my children.”
For his five biological offspring, however, the fish trade is off limits. “No way,” he said. “You don’t want your kids doing this.”
Murky waters
Most deep-sea fish — legit or caught by slaves — travels through the same steps: trawler, mothership, onshore fishmonger, processing plant, exporter, importer and, finally, supermarket or restaurant.
The world of Thai trawlers is particularly opaque. “Not all of these fishing boats are bad,” Rende Taylor said. “There are good ones as well. But picking out the bad seeds is very difficult.”
Reckoning the number of men in slavery on Thai vessels is almost impossible, she said. “Thousands” is a common estimate among anti-trafficking agencies.
Reckoning the number of men in slavery on Thai vessels is almost impossible, she said. “Thousands” is a common estimate among anti-trafficking agencies.
Attempting to measure the trade’s criminality is exasperating: even figures on legal operations are elusive. The trade is so badly regulated that officials are unsure just how many Thai boats and fishermen ply the seas.
The Mirror Foundation, a Bangkok-based anti-trafficking NGO, estimates around 250,000 fishermen labor on long-haul boats with the percentage of captives “far greater than anyone imagines.”
Thailand claims one of the world’s largest commercial fishing fleets. In its last public census, the Thai Fisheries Department counted more than 25,000 mid- to large-sized vessels. But this picture is further muddled by “ghost boats,” Thai boatman lingo for unregistered deep-sea vessels.
They are rampant. Numerous officials cited in a 2011 International Organization for Migration report estimate that more than half of all fishing boats are unregistered.
Many ghost boats are actually full-on clones of registered boats mimicking everything from the paperwork to the paint job, according to investigations by the Labor Rights Promotion Network, a Thai NGO based in Samut Sakhon.
“A boat owner might have a fleet of 10 boats,” said Piyakrai Seelakort, a caseworker with the network. “Four will be legitimate. Six will be clones.”
If approached by marine police, a Thai captain is required to provide the boat’s registration and “seafarer” books, government-issued documents that include each fisherman’s name and photo.
“All of this is easy to fake,” Bpa Ouan said. The veteran captain depicted his interactions with various marine authorities as negotiated shakedowns.
“If the Indonesian navy wants to drag you in, you bribe them 10 million rupiah [$1,090]. In Thailand, it’s about 20,000 baht [$646]. You can bribe them on the spot, and keep fishing, or bribe them once you’re tugged ashore,” he said. “But you’re going to end up bribing them.”
Trawling under the radar
Under such an anarchic approach to regulation, the number of sea slaves remains a mystery. What they catch is not. All escaped slaves interviewed by GlobalPost, and most ex-captives profiled by anti-trafficking agencies, describe laboring on a particular style of vessel: the trawler.
Sturdy and ubiquitous on Southeast Asia’s seas, the trawler is the ideal deep-sea slave ship. Nearly 60 percent of all Thai vessels’ catch is pulled aboard a trawler, according to a UN fisheries report. Manning nets on the roughly 50-foot boats is a job for at least 15 people. But on ghost boats, ex-slaves report, captives often squeeze all that labor from seven or eight men.
If a fishing pole is a sniper rifle, a trawler net is a Dresden-style bombardment. Heavily weighted mesh nets dredge the sea floor and scoop up everything in their path. Another less-popular technique — the “purse seine” method — captures fish that swim in the warmer zones between the waves and the ocean floor.
Either way, more than half of a typical trawler’s catch amounts to “trash fish”: tiny fish and unpalatable species. Trash fish, however, are not trash per se: they’re sold to processors that grind them up bones and all to make fish oil, livestock feed, fertilizer, pet food and low-quality edible nuggets.
“The biggest thing in the net could be nearly 90 kilos [nearly 200 pounds],” said Kim Net, a 26-year-old former slave from Cambodia. “The smallest are as little as your fist.”
A typical Thai trawler’s high-value catch consists of snapper, sardines, squid, anchovies and mackerel, according to multiple sources including the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Not only do these species match ex-slaves’ descriptions of their trawler’s catch, they make up for many of the breeds shipped en masse to America.
In 2011, according to National Marine Fisheries Service stats, Thailand’s US exports included the same species associated with illicit trawlers: sardines (12.4 million pounds), processed fish balls and cakes (10.2 million pounds), mackerel (9 million pounds), squid (8.8 million pounds), cuttlefish (1.2 million pounds), snapper (237,500 pounds), anchovies (167,000 pounds) and so on. The US imports 5.3 billion pounds of edible seafood every year.
Claiming that no slave-harvested seafood finds its way into America’s anchovy salads, squid linguine or sardine sandwiches is highly dubious. Once a slave-caught fish leaves a ghost boat and comes aboard the mothership, it becomes nearly impossible to trace back to the original boat.
Captains, beholden to their syndicate’s owners, radio a description of their catch to supervisors on land. When they locate their mothership, the boat’s haul is transferred to a stall inside its ice room. Those who enter must first don an industrial suit.
“If you take your gloves off in there, your fingernails will turn green and fall out,” said Da, a 38-year-old Thai boatman. “If you took your suit off, you’d die."
Such extreme temperatures keep fish unspoiled for their onshore recipient, the fishmongering Yi Bua. This job title, a loanword from Southeast Asia’s ethnic Chinese merchant class, roughly translates as “middleman.” They are paid to serve as a conduit between the syndicates that catch fish and the processing plant.
“The big businesses need fish and the Yi Bua has them. They’re skilled negotiators just like any broker selling real estate or cars,” said Sompong Sakaew of the Labor Rights Promotion Network. “It’s considered a good job. If a big fish costs $2, he’ll charge the factory $2.10.”
Any hope of distinguishing slave-caught fish from the rest evaporates with the Yi Bua, who intermingle fish from many different boats.
“The Yi Bua are businessmen. It’s not their job to ask questions about conditions on the boat,” Piyakrai said. “The big company he’s contracted under can stress that he shouldn’t buy from ghost ships. But no one really knows how they were caught out there on the ocean. Not even the Yi Bua.”
Infamous industry
Last August, at the government’s invitation, a UN special rapporteur arrived in Thailand to scrutinize the country’s struggle against human trafficking. The assessment of their guest, a Nigerian human rights lawyer named Joy Ezeilo, was blunt. By diplomatic standards, it was eviscerating.
Captivity on fishing vessels, Ezeilo said, has become “notoriously common.”
She laid the blame not just on criminals but on the government itself. Anti-trafficking laws, she said, are “weak and fragmented” and “hampered by deep-rooted corruption, especially among the low-cadre law enforcement officers at provincial and local levels.”
Awkwardness peaked when Ezeilo, at a gathering inside the government’s own ministerial chambers, asked all Thai bureaucrats to clear the room so she could speak privately with NGOs, said Chutintorn Gongsakdi, a deputy director general with Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“There’s an inherent mistrust,” he said. “She doesn’t trust any government data. But that means, from our point of view, that the data she trusts isn’t government data. It makes us a bit frustrated. Some of this evidence is hearsay.”
Thai bureaucrats, Chutintorn said, want export partners to gently encourage the fight against Thailand’s forced labor woes. Instead, in the eyes of some officials, the bigger partner rubs Thailand’s nose in it.
Though the UN’s critique is tough, it does not pose the economic threat wielded by the US State Department’s three-tier “Trafficking in Persons” ranking. Thailand currently occupies the “tier two watch list,” a next-to-last grade shared with Afghanistan and Angola.
Washington may decide that Thai anti-trafficking efforts this year are on the upswing. But if it doesn’t — a strong possibility — Thailand will be knocked down to tier three in the company of Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
By law, that ranking will force President Barack Obama to consider aid sanctions against Thailand, one of America’s oldest Asian allies. The new report is due this summer and Thai diplomats, Chutintorn said, are anxiously awaiting the verdict.
“Seriously,” Chutintorn said, “this alienates friends, OK? If we’re ranked in tier three, we consider that unjustified. It will make my colleagues lose heart. I’ve seen it. They just want to change their jobs. In Asia, maybe we’re not strong. We need some encouragement. We’re soft-hearted people.”
Slipping through the cracks
The problem is not Thailand’s law which, under a 2008 overhaul, now threatens traffickers with harsh prison terms. The problem, according to anti-trafficking experts, is that so few offenders are pursued and punished.
In all of 2010, authorities pursued fewer than one dozen alleged forced labor violations, according to the US State Department. The most high-profile case so far dates back to 2006, when a Thai fishing syndicate set 77 men adrift with no food, water or fuel near Indonesian waters, in lieu of paying their salaries. They drifted for months. Half died. The 38 who survived were, by court decree, awarded $4,170 per person from the boat’s owner.
Police raids into safe houses filled with boat-bound captives remain infrequent. “It’s kicking in doors and finding 10, 12, 15 guys,” Rende Taylor said. “Again, we’re talking about a problem in the thousands.” Spot-check inspections of potential ghost ships are, in the US trafficking report’s estimation, “practically nonexistent.”
Were police to rescue more seafood slaves, they would have food to eat and a place to stay. In recent years, the Thai government built four shelters for male forced labor victims. Half are located in bustling port areas prone to sea slavery: Songkhla and Ranong. But none are filled to capacity.
The accounts of former captives portray local police as vultures, not liberators. “The Thai government must address the fact that most Thai police at local and provincial levels are predators of migrants,” said Phil Robertson, the Bangkok-based deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.
“Let me use that word clearly,” Robertson said. “Predators. Who will extort and abuse migrants. If a migrant goes to make a report at the local police station, they will not be listened to and, in fact, will likely be arrested.”
American seafood importers can only do so much to compensate for Thai police apathy, said Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for the National Fisheries Institute, America's chief seafood trade organization and lobbying group based outside Washington D.C. The institute urges all seafood corporations to hire outside inspectors. In 2008, when an International Labor Organization-funded report alleged forced labor in Thailand's shrimp trade, the group pushed for a thorough investigation, he said. "Our members," Gibbons said, "have no interest in sourcing seafood from companies that use illegal and exploitative labor practices."
The institute has considered whether "dockside audits" could help spot abuses in Thailand. But monitoring the open seas, Gibbons said, is far more challenging than investigating shrimp farms and factories. "When we see companies named and boats singled out," Gibbons said, "we have a better chance of playing a role."
Plausible deniability of Thailand's deep-sea forced labor is no longer an easy defense for importers in one of America's biggest markets. This year, California enacted an ambitious law forcing any business with at least $500,000 in sales within the state economy to prove its supply chain is free of slavery. Those that can't are made to publicly admit potential complicity in overseas forced labor.
If placing the burden of proof on suppliers is the trend, Thailand’s seafood industry may face a reckoning. “They stand to lose a lot of money if they can’t look into their supply chains and prove they’re clean,” Rende Taylor said.
“Perhaps the industry could help regulate itself,” she said. “Why can’t good businesses put pressure on bad ones and say, ‘We don’t want to mar the global reputation of our industry. We want to export clean, good products to the world. Don’t ruin it for us.’”
With additional reporting by Parinee Chantaharn.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Asia Times Online :: To be a Burmese slave in Thailand
Aug 12, 2011
By Simon Roughneen
SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand - Rolling up his right shirt sleeve to show a scarred forearm, Than Zaw Oo recalls the beatings he endured onboard the Thai fishing boat where he says he was held as indentured labor - in other words, a slave - for almost three years.
"They beat me many times, sometimes a few times a week," he says. "In the end, I just ran away after the captain accused me of stealing mobile phones."
Like many others who have worked at the low end of Thailand's fishing sector, Than Zaw Oo is an immigrant worker. An ethnic Burman from Myanmar's southern Mon state, he was first lured to sea on a false promise and misguided hope of escaping the economic depression in his home country, also known as Burma.
"The broker told me I could earn 20,000 baht [US$666] but only had to work onboard for four months," he says, referring to the Myanmar agents who, often for an extortionate fee, offer to find jobs for their desperate compatriots who cross into Thailand seeking work. Anywhere between two to three million Myanmar migrants are currently working in Thailand, along with several hundred thousands of Cambodians and Laos.
The agents, however, are usually human traffickers who often pocket the salaries promised to the workers. Thousands are held against their will - as slaves - on fishing boats or in factories or as commercial sex workers, according to human-rights groups.
In theory, Thailand's labor laws should prevent this from happening. But a cabal of corrupt cops, bent brokers and exploitative employers has for decades made easy pickings of many Myanmar, Cambodian and Lao migrants who in their economic plight often cross into Thailand illegally.
"The ship captain held onto my passport," recounts Than Zaw Oo. "He kept everybody's, so we could not escape even when he came to land." Every six or seven months the vessel docked at one of several small Indonesian islands, the names of which Than Zaw Oo - who at 23-years-old cannot read or write - does not recall. "I cannot speak much Thai," he recounts, "I did not know from day to day what was going on."
After one beating too many, he finally went into hiding almost three years after first going to sea. "We were in Indonesia again," he says. "There were other Burmese there, I told them what was happening and they gave me somewhere to hide."
Three months later, without any official documentation, he returned to Thailand assisted by the same compatriots who hid him on the unnamed Indonesian island. For all his time at sea, he says he came back with only 21,000 baht, as well as scars on his head, arms and legs. "The captain and some of the men did this with a broken bottle," he claims.
Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, the United Nations rapporteur on human trafficking is currently in Thailand at the invitation of the Thai government to report on the country's efforts in addressing its trafficking problem. According to a leaked 2009 US diplomatic cable from the Bangkok embassy, the Thai government "recognizes the seriousness of the problem". Thailand is currently on the US State Department's human trafficking watch list.
As of May 2011, there were only five confirmed convictions in Thailand for trafficking-related offences since 2009, when eight convictions were reported, according to the latest US State Department report on global trafficking trends, which was released in June. The conviction numbers are small given the apparent scale of the problem. Siwanoot Soitong of Thailand's Anti-Labor Trafficking Project told Asia Times Online that "an estimated 1,000 plus, mostly Burmese, are trafficked into the Thai fishing industry annually".
No rights, no hope
Thailand is now in the process of implementing a registration scheme for migrant workers, which in theory should reduce the scope for brokers and police to traffic and extort migrants, as those without papers are the most vulnerable to predation. The scheme ran from mid-June to mid-July this year and almost 700,000 Myanmar migrants registered during that month, along with another 200,000 Cambodians and Laos.
While the process has been hailed as a success, it has also apparently resulted in some damaging side-effects. According to the Thailand section of the latest US State Department survey of global trafficking trends, "Observers remained concerned that the process to legalize migrant workers with its associated fees, as well as costs imposed by poorly regulated and unlicensed labor brokers, increased the vulnerability of migrant workers to trafficking and debt bondage."
An illustrative case is that of Saw, a 32-year-old ethnic Kachin originally from Myitkina in Myanmar's troubled north, currently the site of fighting between the Myanmar army and insurgent Kachin Independence Army. He spoke with Asia Times Online under a pseudonym inside a mosquito-blown tin shack on stilts at the edge of a muddy building site in Pathumthani province, about an hour's drive from central Bangkok.
He spoke just three days after fleeing his previous job after a broker demanded an additional 2,000 baht above the official 3,800 baht government fee for processing his registration with Thai authorities. "I just have the copies of the papers," he says, "the agent has the originals." He says he was threatened with physical violence if he did not pay the extra tariff. In his own words, he "panicked and ran away".
Such cases could become more commonplace when a plan by Thailand's new Yingluck Shinawatra-led government to implement a nationwide 300 baht (US$10) per day minimum wage comes into force. While details of the plan are yet to be finalized, it is unlikely that migrant workers will be eligible for the higher minimum rate.
Most migrant workers from Thailand's Southeast Asian neighbors already work in low-paid, attritional sectors - such as fishing, construction and garment-making - that many Thais shun due to low pay and substandard working conditions. While the millions of Thais currently working on a paltry 100-200 baht (US$3.33-$6.66) per day will welcome the rise, the concern is that employers will try to avoid paying a higher minimum wage by recruiting and hiring more migrants, which in turn could add impetus to Thailand's human trafficking and slave labor vortex.
Than Zaw Oo, the migrant worker who escaped slave labor conditions on a Thai fishing boat, is now washing clothes for a living and earning around 100 baht a day. He says he just wants to save up enough money to one day return to Myanmar. For him, there is little hope in either country as the cycle of poverty and exploitation reaches deeper into his family.
"My mother died while I was away at sea," he reveals. "After my mum died, [my] stepfather sold my young sister to another family, somewhere in [Yangon], for 25,000 kyat [US3,740]. He probably just wanted the money for drink," said Than Zaw Oo, who signed off the interview with a determined "I will go back and find her."
Simon Roughneen is a foreign correspondent. His website is www.simonroughneen.com.
Source: Asia Times Online
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