Thailand’s upgrade in US trafficking report questioned

By CS Thana

BANGKOK (AA) – Rights groups operating in Thailand questioned Friday the Southeast Asian country’s upgrade in the United States' annual Trafficking in Persons Report.

The groups criticized the upgrade and maintained that the country had not done enough to warrant an upgrade.

"While the Thai government has made progress in some areas, and carried out some legal reforms, it has largely failed to implement anti-trafficking laws, act against corrupt and abusive police and other officials, and end recruitment systems that deliver migrants into debt bonded labor," Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

An open letter signed by 19 human rights organizations including Fortify Rights, Finnwatch and the Anti Slavery Coalition echoed the statements made by Human Rights Watch.

"We believe easing pressure on the Thai Government to fulfill its anti-trafficking obligations with only legislative reforms and policy commitments could delay it from making the actual changes... to really address the problem of human trafficking," the letter reads.

"It is our view that this move is premature and could undermine international efforts to significantly and permanently improve working conditions among migrant workers in Thailand."

The United States removed Thailand from a human trafficking blacklist Thursday after acknowledging “significant efforts” made by Thai authorities.

“Thailand was upgraded to Tier 2 Watch List,” the U.S. embassy in Bangkok said in a statement released Thursday and reported in local media.

“The ranking indicates that the Government of Thailand made significant efforts to eliminate trafficking during the rating period, but still does not fully meet the minimum standard for doing so,” it added.

In 2015, Thailand remained in Tier 3 -- the lowest rank in the annual U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report -- for a second consecutive year.

A Tier 3 ranking for a third consecutive year would have triggered a steep decrease in the buying of seafood products by U.S. companies -- the fishing and seafood industries being the main economic sectors in Thailand accused of using trafficked labor.

“In 2015, the Thai government reported increases over the previous years in investigating sex trafficking cases and suspected cases of forced labor, as well as in prosecuting and convicting hundreds of traffickers,” said the U.S. embassy statement.

“The government also began to investigate labor trafficking in the fishing industry in dozens of cases,” it added.

The report, however, emphasized that the Tier 2 ranking indicates that “the problem of human trafficking in Thailand remains large and requires additional, substantial and effective government leadership.”

The report issued a series of recommendations and encouraged Thailand, among others to “actively scrutinize and improve labor recruitment practices through official and non-official channels for migrant workers”, as well as take measures against “some government officials [who] profit from bribes and [have] direct involvement in the extortion of migrants and their sale to brokers”.

Human smuggling and human trafficking in the fishery and seafood industry has been a chronic problem in Thailand for decades.

Migrants, mostly from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Bangladesh, are brought by smugglers into Thailand where they hope to find work.

An increasing number of them are Rohingya Muslims who fled persecution in Myanmar’s troubled western Rakhine state.

Over the years, many of the Rohingya -- who seek to travel to majority Muslim Malaysia -- had been kept in jungle camps in southern Thailand by human traffickers who then demanded ransoms from their families.

In May 2015, dozens of bodies were discovered in graves along Thailand’s border with Malaysia, prompting Thailand’s military government, which seized power in a coup in May 2014, to launch a large-scale campaign against human trafficking.