For Migrants on Some Thai Fishing Boats, a Life of Slavery

Rayong, Thailand. Thousands of men from Burma and Cambodia set sail on Thai fishing boats every day, but many are unwilling seafarers — slaves forced to work in brutal conditions under threat of death.

Hla Myint saw the sea for the first time when traffickers delivered him, after a week’s trek through the jungle from Burma, to a ship on Thailand’s coast.

He said it was the beginning of seven months of “hell,” during which there were beatings “every day, every hour.”

His is one of a multitude of stories of slavery in Thailand’s multi-million dollar fishing industry, which campaigners say relies on forced labor to provide seafood for restaurants and supermarkets around the world.

Hla Myint decided to escape — throwing himself into choppy waters and clinging to a life buoy for five hours before reaching land — after seeing his captain kill a crewmate who had been caught trying to escape.

Now Hla Myint works with a local aid group helping others to flee. He told his story during a dash to rescue four young Burmese men hiding in bushes near the coastal town of Rayong, just hours after they broke out of a locked room and fled.

“They threatened that if we tried to run away, one bullet cost only 25 baht ($0.83),” said Myo Oo, 20, whose name has also been changed.

Another member of the group, a teenager clearly still petrified, described beatings with the butt of a gun.

The UN recently acknowledged Thailand’s “significant progress” in efforts to tackle trafficking, but said it needed to go further and warned that trafficking of forced labor in the fishing industry was “growing in scale.”

Sirirat Ayuwathana of the Thail Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, which is in charge of tackling trafficking in the country, said authorities were aware of the problem and planned to set up a commission to work on registering all fishing boats and crew members.

“We cannot know what happens when the boats leave the shore,” she said. “The workers could be tortured or detained. The captains have total control of the boat.”

Men toil for up to 20 hours a day, seven days a week, only able to snatch a few moments for food and rest between hauling nets, according to a report released by the International Organization for Migration.

Some boats use “mother ships” to refuel and take on new crew to avoid returning to land and many fishermen spend months or even years trapped in waters as far away as Somalia, according to the report.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch, who wrote the report, said marine police in one Thai coastal area told him that they found up to 10 bodies a month washed up on the shore.

In a 2009 study, more than half of Cambodian migrants trafficked onto Thai boats surveyed by the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking said they had seen their captains killing one of their colleagues.

But Mana Sripitak, of the National Fisheries Association of Thailand, said it was “impossible” that forced labor was used, because the migrants were all willing workers.

According to official figures, 16.95 billion baht worth of fish was hauled into Thailand from the sea during 2010. Major exporters China, the European Union, the United States and Japan are some of the major export destinations.

There are 35,000 migrants officially registered as working on the boats, mostly from Burma and Cambodia. But campaigners say poor working conditions put off Thai seafarers, so captains use trafficking victims to restock their crews.

The US State Department has placed Thailand on a trafficking in persons “watchlist” for two years running.

It estimates there are tens of thousands of people caught in a web of trafficking across the country — in various types of forced labor and sexual exploitation.

On a recent visit to Thailand UN special rapporteur on people trafficking, Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, said the country was not doing enough to curb the trade.

“The immunity of traffickers, especially the collusion with the official law enforcement agencies, is really diluting the government’s effort and efficacy of its policies and programs to combat human trafficking,” she said.