Thailand: How Trafficking Networks Feed off Local Corruption
By: Napat Rungsrithananon
Tags: Human Rights, Corruption, Slavery, Human Trafficking, Thailand

Defined as the process in which people are forced into exploitative situations for profit — and for a range of purposes, including forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude — human trafficking is an international problem on a growing scale that affects millions of people. It is akin and amounts to modern slavery, and has received unprecedented attention from political and religious leaders, and in the international media.

Unfortunately, in spite of the all the growing and welcome attention it has received, there is yet to be a complete consensus on the true scale of today’s slavery — let alone the question of whether it is growing or falling.

According to the latest Global Slavery Index (GSI) — published by Walk Free Foundation in 2018 and widely regarded as the most comprehensive effort to date to measure slavery — there were 40.3 million people trapped in slavery in 2016, with 71% being female and 29% male. The figure represented a downward revision from the 45.8 million — released in the 2016 report — and it was significantly higher than the 2014 figure of 35.8 million from the 2014 report. While one may be tempted to conclude that the number of the enslaved has grown, the index authors explain that the fluctuation in figures, if anything, reflect only the improvement in measurement.

Being able to accurately measure the state of this horrendous crime will be necessary. To effectively address the issues of human trafficking, we, first, need to be able to measure which interventions are working and why. Then, we will be able to better determine what efforts shall be supported, replicated and scaled.

THAILAND UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Slavery is a hidden crime and is very difficult and expensive to measure. Trafficking can occur in any country in the world, and most countries are, in fact, involved in this process to some extent — either as a place of recruitment, transit or destination.

Of all regions in the world, Asia-Pacific stands out as one with the largest number of people in slavery — up to 25 million or 62% of the global estimate — with Thailand particularly having recently come under the international spotlight, following a shocking discovery of widespread slavery, trafficking and violence in its multibillion-dollar seafood sector.

A recent follow-on study of 260 fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia by the International Justice Mission (IJM) — which seeks to identify the patterns of labour recruitment and management on Thai fishing vessels — found that 38 per cent of the men were clearly trafficked and another 49 per cent possibly trafficked. Almost 75 per cent reported being made to work at least 16 hours a day, and only 11 per cent were paid more than 9,000 baht ($272 USD) per month or the legal monthly minimum wage in Thailand.

Routinely underpaid and physically abused, three-quarters of migrants were in debt bondage, with one fisherman, in particular, reportedly owing 20,000 baht ($604 USD) to his own brother who worked as a supervisor overseeing the men. He was quoted as saying “I fear for my life as he has killed in front of me before … I don’t dare to run. He would kill my children.”

DARK SIDE OF THAILAND

Thailand is a picturesque country and one of the world’s top tourist destinations, attracting a record 35 million visitors in 2017 alone.

Behind the beautiful beaches and turquoise waters, however, lies a dark reputation.

Thailand has always had a dark to it. It is widely known as a regional hub for trafficking. It is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children from poorer neighbouring countries — namely Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar — with many forced to work in a sex industry or labour-intensive sectors — such as fishing, construction and agriculture — where they are routinely subject to abuse.

The GSI released in 2018 estimates that Thailand is home to over 610,000 people living in slavery or around 9% of the total population, while a 2014 UNAIDS report suggests that Thailand has more than 123,500 sex workers, with at least 40 per cent being under 18.

Indeed, despite the harsh realities of slavery and forced labour, a large number of migrants continue to move to Thailand — and thereby put themselves at greater risk of being exploited — in the hope of better life opportunities and income. Those from Myanmar, for instance, are driven away from home by ethnic tensions and statelessness, while Laotians and Cambodians are motivated by a lack of employment opportunities and poor harvests.

VULNERABLE

Further fueling the vicious cycle of trafficking and slavery is the possibility of detention by Thai authorities — and this in turn translates into victims’ greater vulnerability and likelihood of exploitation.

Back in April 2016, a rescue of nearly 100 migrants workers from Myanmar — who came into Thailand legally but were for months exploited and locked up while being either unpaid or underpaid — on construction sites and chicken- and coconut-exporting factories was carried out by Thai authorities, with support from the non-profit Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN). Of those rescued, 10 men were willing to help with cases against Thai and Burmese recruitment agencies and brokers, but it turned out that the Thai authorities proceeded to hold them in a human trafficking shelter even though they all had passports and had entered the country legally.

Indeed, the MWRN has even made clear its reluctance to get involved with Thai authorities and its belief that migrants are better off in the long run in Thailand not being identified as trafficking victims.

That trafficking victims tend to veer away from seeking help from Thai authorities — for fear of being detained in shelters and unable to work to earn money to send home or pay back debts to brokers — does not help.

LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT VICTIMS’ HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

Similarly tragic is how little attention is paid to the health and well-being of trafficking victims. When hundreds of fishermen — who were trafficked and sold to work on the boats — were rescued from Thai fishing boats off the coast of Indonesia back in 2015, they received little support to help them recover from the horrors they had experienced. Despite having endured beatings, abuse and torture, and despite being regarded as families’ breadwinners, those able to return home were penniless, with nothing but a crushing sense of shame.

Indeed, International Organization for Migration found that 57 per cent of men trafficked for work on fishing boats, as well as other forms of forced labour, exhibited symptoms of depression, while 46 per cent suffered from anxiety and 41 per cent from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another study published on the JAMA Pediatrics journal — which interviewed 387 boys and girls between the age of 10 and 17 in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, who had been trafficked for sex work, forced begging and forced labour — found that 58 per cent were depressed, a third suffered from an anxiety disorder and around a quarter affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. 12 per cent said they had tried to harm or kill themselves, while almost 16 per cent reported having suicidal thoughts.

THAILAND’S RAMPED UP EFFORT

In 2008, Thailand passed the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, seemingly demonstrating a recognition of the need to address trafficking issues. The implementation of the act, however, has been rather fragmented, and June 2017 saw the US Department of State downgrading Thailand from Tier 2 to Tier 2 Watch List — just above the lowest Tier 3 — in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, citing Thailand’s inadequate effort to tackle human trafficking and failure to convict officials complicit in trafficking crimes.

More recently, however, Thailand can be seen to ramp up its effort. While networks of trafficking — and slavery — still persist, commendable progress has been made. In July 2017, a criminal court in Bangkok convicted 62 people — including an army general, two provincial politicians and police officers — out of 103 defendants for trafficking. The trial — which began in 2015 after the discovery of more than 30 bodies, with many believed to be Rohingya, in shallow graves near the Malaysian border — was the biggest of its kind in Thailand, and the fact that the court took more than 12 hours to deliver verdicts speaks volume of Thailand’s increased seriousness about the issue.

January 2018 then saw the raid of “Victoria Secret” massage parlour in central Bangkok — the largest of its kind in recent years — by officials from the Thai Department of Special Investigation (DSI) and armed military officers — rescuing a total of 113 women, including 98 from Myanmar, 11 from Laos, 2 from China and 4 Thai citizens. More than 100 were reportedly forced into prostitution. Many were under the age of 18, and only a handful had any formal identification papers, suggesting that they were illegally trafficked to Bangkok.

This particular raid also led to the discovery of a list of “special guests” — which included police officers from the Metropolitan Police Bureau, and government officials from the Immigration Bureau and the Revenue Department — and the subsequent dismissal of five senior police officers. It is alleged that these special guests were entitled to free services at the brothel and were those who had recently visited the massage parlour.

Since February 2018, the government has also enlisted Thai Airways — Thailand’s flag carrier — to help combat human trafficking by showing anti-trafficking in-flight videos on its international routes, and shopping malls, cinemas and train stations across the capital to display similar videos on how to look for signs of trafficking.

All these steps were widely welcome, and June 2018 saw Thailand re-promoted to Tier 2 in the annual Trafficking in Persons report, where the aforementioned 2017 trial which ended with long prison sentences for 11 officials received a special mention.

CORRUPTION AS THE BARRIER

Despite the much needed ramp up in effort, the fight against human trafficking may prove more challenging and complex that the government realises. After all, besides clashing with the regional networks of trafficking, the Thai authorities will also have to endure a fight from within.

In other words, this war cannot be won unless corruption has been tackled internally.

Looking back at the two previously discussed examples — both of which were very high-profile — one could easily see that corruption played a big part in the thriving of trafficking networks.

The human trafficking trial back in 2017 saw a number of officials convicted as being complicit in supporting the trafficking networks, with the most senior individual being Lt. Gen. Manas Kongpan, a former army advisor, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for offences involving trafficking and taking bribes.

Carried out by the DSI with support from armed military personnel, the raid of the massage parlour in January 2018 not only led to the discovery of collusion between local authorities and brothel’s operators, but was also conducted entirely without cooperation from the local police.

In fact, this particular raid was not the first to unearth the collusion between the police and brothel owners in Bangkok. Back in June 2016, a similar raid by the DSI that rescued 15 children from the Nataree massage parlour, for example, uncovered a ledge of bribe payments to government agencies and police units.

Surely, one cannot believe that all these gigantic brothels were able to operate for years without the knowledge of local police. After all, these businesses — illegal in theory but tolerated in practice — often operate in plain sight.

It should be clear, then, that corruption amongst the local police remains one of the greatest barriers to tackling networks of trafficking and slavery.

To make matters worse, corruption, in fact, is not only confined to local authorities but also prevalent amongst those at the national level.

Following the coup by the army in 2014 — whereby one of the justifying claims was to do with the then administration’s perceived corruption — Thailand under the junta has not fared any better, and Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index paints a very mixed picture of the army’s efforts to fight corruption.

One needs not to look far to see that the central government is similarly corrupt. Despite having been exposed by the public and media outlets for owning a number of luxury watches — something that is difficult to reconcile given his official salary — Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Pawit Wongsuwan still managed to walk away unscatched. That was in January 2018.

With the central government corrupt to the core, the picture is clear. One cannot really and realistically expect local authorities to be corruption-free, and one cannot expect human trafficking networks to be stamped out when they essentially feed off corruption.

Sources: