Another slap in the face for Thai law enforcement

Thailand has again been put on a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) watchlist by the US government. This is Washington’s diplomatic tool to “encourage” other countries to tackle the problem of human trafficking. The listing is bad news for Thailand because it shows that the government is not doing enough to bring this issue to a proper conclusion. After all, Thailand has been on the Tier 2 watchlist for three consecutive years. 

The US report states that Thailand has failed to show satisfactory results in combating this crime. If Thailand fails to end human trafficking in and through its territory, the country may become subject to a more severe listing on Tier 3 of the report, which could lead to punitive measures.

Human trafficking involves the acts of recruiting, transporting, transferring or receiving a person through the use of force. Thousands of men and women, as well as children, continue to be forced into miserable situations via trafficking every year. 

Due partly to its geographic location in the centre of Southeast Asia, Thailand has been both a destination and transit country for many trafficked men, women and children who are subject to forced labour in various industries, and particularly in the sex trade. 

The US report said victims from neighbouring countries such as China, Myanmar and Vietnam, as well as from places such as Russia, Uzbekistan and even Fiji, migrate willingly to Thailand for various reasons. Unfortunately, many of them are later defrauded or coerced by trafficking gangs into forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation. Some are forced to beg on the streets. The problem has been exacerbated because of a lack of legal enforcement, corruption, and the hard conditions in the migrants’ homelands. 

Cooperation is required from the migrants and their countries of origin. For instance, the TIP report said research made available in 2010 indicated that 23 per cent of all Cambodians deported by Thai authorities at the Poipet border crossing were trafficking victims. A study by the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking found that Thai authorities deport more than 23,000 Cambodian trafficking victims each year. Similarly, Lao authorities have reported that groups of 50 to 100 Lao trafficking victims were among thousands of Lao nationals deported by Thai authorities in recent times. An assessment of the cumulative risk of labour trafficking among Burmese migrant workers in the seafood industry in Samut Sakhon found that 57 per cent are employed in forced labour.

The Thai government has tried to address the issue by enforcing the law and arresting offenders, but progress has been slow. The number of arrests related to trafficking cases is small compared to the severity of the problem. Moreover, it is shameful that the effort is being hampered by the massive corruption of Thai law-enforcement personnel, who actually create the right conditions for trafficking to prosper, the TIP report said. 

The report said: “There were credible reports that officials protected brothels, other commercial sex venues, and seafood and sweatshop facilities from raids and inspections, and that some officials engaged in commercial sex acts with child trafficking victims. In addition to the well-known corruption of local-level police officers, there were also protective relationships between central-level specialist police officers and the trafficking hot-spot regions to which they were assigned.”

In fact, the responsible agencies must also realise that this problem works both ways, since many Thais are trafficked to other countries every year to become low-paid labourers or sex workers.  

We do not need the TIP report to show us the seriousness of the problem. Regardless of the result of Thailand’s inclusion on the US watchlist, the responsible agencies here must start to address these crimes against humanity. The task does not fall to the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security alone. It requires cooperation from everyone involved – from employees, employers, communities, law-enforcement officials and immigration officers. Moreover, Thailand will have to work much harder with other nations to prevent more migrants being lured here, either wittingly or unwittingly.