International
Athit Perawongmetha / Reuters
The leader of Thailand's junta has vowed to take legal action against companies using forced labor, after the Associated Press published a report highlighting that fish caught by enslaved migrant workers was being exported from Thai ports to global markets.
In comments published Friday by the English-language Bangkok Post newspaper, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha acknowledged he had seen the article and said his government was stepping up efforts to prosecute those responsible.
"If they still continue to exploit their fellow human beings, they should not be given any licenses to operate businesses in Thailand, and they must receive the punishment they deserve," Prayuth said in a written response to questions the paper submitted.
On Wednesday, the AP reported that men were held in a cage along with hundreds of people who are trapped on the remote Indonesian island village of Benjina, and the seafood they caught was tracked to Thai exporters who sell to global markets, including the United States. An earlier investigation by Human Rights Watch revealed egregious labor abuses of a shrimp supplier to Walmart.
More than 40 men interviewed on Benjina said they were brought to Indonesia from Thailand and put on trawlers with Thai captains who forced them to drink unclean water and work 20- to 22-hour shifts with no days off.
Almost all of the men, who are from Myanmar, said they were kicked, whipped with toxic stingray tails or otherwise beaten if they complained or tried to rest. They were paid little or nothing.
The article prompted the U.S. government and major business leaders in the U.S. to renew calls for the Thai government to crack down on slavery in its fishing fleets, and to punish people who force migrant workers to catch seafood that can end up in the United States.
Reports of the trafficking of Burmese and Cambodian migrants onto Thai fishing and shrimping vessels are common. The Thai boats with bonded labor often avoid docking for months at time, trapping the men on board, according to rights groups in the region. But few ships can stay out to sea indefinitely, and some workers are able to escape when they port, usually in Malaysia or Indonesia.
A 2008 survey from the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking found that about half of all Cambodian workers deported from Thailand for entering illegally reported positive experiences, but the report said, in the labor sector, there was one exception: "the fishing industry, which was 100 percent exploitative."
Thailand's biggest seafood company, Thai Union Frozen Products, announced that it immediately cut ties with a supplier after determining it might be involved with forced labor and other abuses. Thai Union did not name the supplier.
The International Organization for Migration in Indonesia estimated that 4,000 foreign fishermen are stranded on remote eastern islands in the archipelago after being abandoned by their boat captains following a government moratorium on foreign fishing that has docked vessels to crack down on illegal operators.
"It is reasonable to expect many are victims of trafficking, if not outright slavery," said Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission for the group, who said it has been working with the government to repatriate trafficked fishermen.
At least 1.6 million foreign migrant workers, most of them employed in the fishing industry, are now registered with the government and have the same labor protections as Thai workers, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
On Thursday, the country's junta-appointed lawmakers voted unanimously to create tougher penalties for violating the country's anti-human trafficking law. Causing a person's death through human trafficking could bring the death penalty, and those who cause severe injury face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a fine of $12,300.
The bill had been under debate for several weeks, and is part of the government's efforts to show it is getting tough on the issue.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, urged Thai authorities to tackle the scourge.
"The Thailand government has made repeated verbal commitments to get tough with traffickers but every time, real follow-up has been lacking," Robertson said in an email.
The Bangkok Post quoted Prayuth as thanking members of the media for shedding light on the issue. "I know that every one of you wants to do your job to the best of your ability to help the victims. I think we are on the same team," he said.
But Prayuth and his government have delivered differing messages on the issue. Earlier this week, he urged journalists not to report on human trafficking without considering how the news would affect the country's seafood industry and reputation abroad. He also sarcastically suggested that journalists who ignored him might be executed; State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said from Washington that the U.S. was troubled by the comment.
On Thursday, Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan, Thailand's deputy prime minister, denied there were any slaves working on Thai-flagged fishing boats, instead saying the problems occurred in Indonesia.
Al Jazeera and the Associated Press
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