PAILIN, Cambodia -- Don't ever accept an invitation to go fishing in Thailand. You might not come back.

Almost daily, bodies are washing ashore along the coasts of Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia. These are unfortunate migrants, most of them from here in Cambodia. These people were sold to Thai fishermen who took them out to sea, worked them until they starved to death and then threw them overboard. It happens all the time.

The problem got so bad that the United States Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and the United Nations both but put out reports in recent weeks excoriating Thai and Malaysian authorities for selling Cambodian and Burmese migrants to Thai boat captains, sending them to a near-certain death. "If they are unable to pay for their release," the Senate report said, "the refugees are sold into forced labor, most commonly on fishing boats."

Once on the boat, "they don't come back," said Maj. Gen Visut Vanichbut of the Thai police. "All they get to eat is the fish that get left over in the net. They aren't paid. If they get sick, they're thrown overboard."

When they die, from overwork or starvation, their bodies are thrown to the sharks. In most cases, no one knew the victim was on the boat, and so no one claims the body if it washes ashore.

The general told me about this last year. But the United Nations report shows that the hideous problem continues at full force even now. It quotes several Cambodians who watched fishermen decapitate captives or throw them overboard. Several governments, not just Thailand's, are at fault. And by all accounts, the economic crisis is exacerbating the problem.

Until just now, the Cambodian law governing trafficking did not even recognize men as potential victims. The laws were written to protect women and children drawn into sexual slavery. But in June, the government in Phnom Penh announced that it was revising the statute.

"Today we change our strategy also to focus on men," Kong Chhan, a deputy director in the Ministry of Social Affairs, told the Phnom Penh Post.

Now we can only wait for Thailand to change its strategy.

Most of the news you hear from Thailand these days involves the riots and demonstrations to overturn whatever government happens to be in power. No one talks about the fishing-boat problem. The fishermen pay off the police. The police then cover up the crimes, and so hundreds of victims continue to die month after month.

If a victim manages to survive, then Thailand is well-equipped to care for him and then use international agencies to help send him home. The Thai government has shelters and administrators whose jobs are to help human-trafficking victims. I have seen them. The shelters are quite nice. And that serves as a stark illustration of a noxious paradox that afflicts human-trafficking enforcement in Thailand, Cambodia and much of the world.

When human trafficking first came into focus for law-enforcement a decade ago, legal and political officials everywhere put primary emphasis on protecting the victims the people who were lured into slavery and abused. Stories a decade ago of police and immigration agents jailing and then deporting the trafficking victims along with their captors horrified human-rights advocates, and their complaints were quite influential when the first human-trafficking laws were drafted.

That victim-oriented approach has held firm all these years, and "it has proved to work perfectly for the Thai," said Lance Bonneau head of the International Organization of Migration office in Bangkok, his tone oozing disgust. His organization works with the Thai government to send trafficking victims back home to Cambodia, Burma just as other IOM officers do all over the world.

"If you 'save' the victim," Bonneau told me, "there's no pressure to go after the traffickers" who are paying off the police. "It doesn't upset any of the arrangements the police have" with the fishing boat captains, the brothel and dance-club owners or others who enslave hapless victims. The traffickers can pursue their unconscionable work; the police can continue taking their kickbacks.

When the State Department researches its annual Trafficking in Persons report each year and asks Thailand what it is doing to fight trafficking, the Thai can point to their anti-trafficking laws and to those lovely shelters for victims. Usually, that's enough to save Thailand from a poor rating.

Thailand officials responded to the Senate and United Nations allegations with angry denials. Maybe in Washington's next report, it will look a little deeper at Thailand.

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/359/story/931422.html

I have often wondered how prevalent this is, even at reputable establishments, on Main Street.
It sure is difficult to know. Is it small wonder that TGF will do anything to get out of purgatory?!
BR>Jack

".....and so hundreds of victims continue to die month after month...."
Hundreds of slave fishermen die? Each month? That means many hundreds would be taken on board each month.... a black hole like that would raise attention, surely.
Sounds a bit on the high side.
As these slave are sold to the fishermen, why would they let them starve to death? Are they that cheap that they are not worth feeding? Cheaper to get a replacement?

This story reeks of sensationalist hyperbole.

A fishermans crack would be a terrible thing to fall into.

But seriously: Saw a body pulled off the rocks on Ko Lan one day, never anything in the media about it so obviously no one of importance.

Agree with Harcourt "This story reeks of sensationalist hyperbole."

Here's my two cents worth: 1. This is one of those sensationalized stories that is written in a purposefully misleading fashion. Notice this sentence: ".....and so hundreds of victims continue to die month after month...." If you look at this sentence closely, you will see that there are actually two separate facts here: 1) hundreds of victims are dying (in an unspecified time period) and 2) this is going on month after month. This is a typical cheap journalistic trick, just like when they talk about sex slaves and then mention how many tourists are coming to Thailand every month. The two facts are not really related, but by putting them in proximity, most people will think that they are. I have learned the look at news articles with a very critical eye.

However, here is the second cent: Thai fishermen are a notoriously tough crowd. One of my wife's uncles was a fishing boat captain and she said that he was a real tough 'mafia' type... at least until another, even tougher, fisherman shot and killed him.

Back in the '80s Thai fishermen killed and or robbed thousands of Vietnamese boat people. At that time the US Navy said of them "If their nets are down, they are fishermen, if their nets are up, they are pirates.'. Thai fishermen who were young men then are middle-aged now and will be Captains and mates aboard today's boats.

If you don't plan to pay the people and you/they will get in trouble if they are get to shore and are illegal immigrants, and your our in the middle of the ocean, it seems a pretty good solution. After all, no one knows they are on the boat and the chances of getting caught are nil. Sensationalism? I don't think so.

That's because it is sensationalist hyperbole. The American fishing industry is locked in a massive propaganda campaign against the Thai fishing industry, in an effort to keep out cheap imports that undercut their own products. In the era of free trade stories like this are the best way to get the US government to block Thai seafood imports.

Yes its all a fabricated story to benifit the US fisherman... who is the one spitting hyperbole here?

If you've read the news, the American seafood industry has launched an enormous effort to either put Thai seafood under extreme tariffs, or ban it completely due to human rights abuse. Burmese fishermen are not the most highly paid of people, and I wouldn't want to be one, but the stories such as this are primarily aimed at protecting the domestic seafood industry in the US. Thai seafood is simply too cheap for America to compete with, so they come out with stories of hundreds of people being decapitated and thrown overboard in an attempt to get legislation to ban Thai seafood, or at least to get high tariffs on it.

It's largely bull*

So DP 25, no Thai crew fishermen die out at sea, no human trading is going on in Thailand, it is all fabricated news?
MC

^ I'm sure that Burmese fishermen do die on board Thai fishing boats. And when they do they are probably tossed overboard because the Captain doesn't want any trouble with the police AND the other Burmese crewmen don't want any troubled with the police.

I'm sure that there are abuses going on, but I do question the scale of abuses mentioned in the article.

This is one of the stories that is too horrible to believe.

I'm sure it happened and continues to happen, it is only a matter of scale. Since the victims are insignificant, nothing will be done to change it, and nobody will even bother to investigate. Similar to Vietnamese boat people, but since there were women and children among those, so it attracted some sympathy and attention. Unfortunate truth is, nobody cares about Cambodian men.

I can recall in the 70´s when working as crew in Australia that a Tasmanian fisherman known as "German George" had a reputation for loosing crew at sea, he always owed them back wages.
I am certain abuses of Burmese fishermen on Thai boats happens, but a fishing crew is a team and the most important thing for the captain is to have a sucessful team.
I just dont believe "hundreds dying every month and executions at sea" Sounds like the US sea food multinationals are up to their dirty tricks