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BENARNEWS- The U.S. government on Thursday removed Thailand from its list of countries that fail to meet minimum standards for combating human trafficking, citing tougher laws and increased prosecution of traffickers.
The removal comes a year after the military government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha launched a crackdown on human trafficking, vowing to solve a problem that past civilian governments failed to overcome. The State Department upgraded Thailand from Tier 3 to the Tier 2 Watch List in its annual report on the state of human trafficking worldwide.
“Labor trafficking investigations increased; however widespread forced labor in Thailand’s seafood sector continued to occur,” the U.S. State Department said in its Trafficking in Persons Report 2016 (TIP).
“The government increased efforts to hold government officials complicit in trafficking crimes criminally accountable; however, official complicity continued to impede progress in combating trafficking,” it said.
The TIP is an annual report that gauges how each country performs in combating human trafficking on its territory. Countries on the bottom-most Tier Three may face certain sanctions from the U.S. government. Elsewhere, Malaysia remained on the Tier 2 Watch List, while Indonesia, India and Bangladesh all stayed a notch above that level - at Tier 2.
“When we talk about “human trafficking,” we’re talking about slavery – modern-day slavery that still today claims more than 20 million victims on any given time,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday in releasing the TIP Report.
“Modern slavery doesn’t happen only in warzones. It exists in areas of both darkness and plain sight of people all over the world – even at sea,” he said, before noting a New York Times report that told the story of a Cambodian who ended up in chains aboard a fishing boat after being trafficked into Thailand.
‘Those who sweat for this will be satisfied’: Thai deputy PM
TIP 2016 placed Thailand on the “Tier 2 Watch List” of countries that are “making significant efforts” to meet minimum standards spelled out in U.S. law but in which the absolute number of human trafficking victims “is very significant or is significantly increasing.”
However, a coalition of human rights, labor and other groups criticized the State Department’s promotion of Thailand on TIP rankings, telling Secretary Kerry in a letter that it would “undermine international efforts to significantly and permanently improve working conditions among migrant workers in Thailand.”
“We are very disappointed at this decision, which does not, in our view, accurately assess the situation on the ground,” Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum – of the groups that signed the letter – said in a news release.
“Migrant workers are still one of the most vulnerable groups in the country to human trafficking, and Thailand has not shown any indication that it intends to allow migrant workers greater access to fundamental rights that would protect them from exploitation,” Gearhart added.
In Bangkok, Prawit Wongsuwan, Thailand’s deputy prime minister and defense minister who is tasked with tackling human trafficking, welcomed the news.
“[G]overnment officials involved will be pleased. Those who sweat for this will be satisfied,” he told reporters at Don Meaung International Airport on Wednesday before leaving for a two-day visit to Myanmar.
“This issue is on national agenda and the prime minister is mindful of this and stresses to all parties involved to solve the problems,” he said.
Thailand was relegated to the State Department’s lowest ranking in June 2014, shortly after the military seized power in May. It remained on Tier 3 a year later, even as neighboring Malaysia was promoted to the Tier 2 Watch List rank.
Thailand needs to follow through in implementing the new laws that helped earn the promotion, said Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director for the U.S.-based research and lobby group Human Rights Watch.
"Thailand's upgrade will be short-lived unless the government recognizes [that] changing laws is not enough, and that they have to get serious about breaking up the trafficking networks that abuse migrant workers with impunity,” he told BenarNews.
“There is still a yawning gap between what gets put in glossy Thai government reports to the international community and what happens on the ground to vulnerable migrant workers. The reality is the changes in law and regulations so far have not meant much in the lives of trafficked Burmese or Cambodian workers,” he said.
At risk
There are about 3.5 million migrant workers in Thailand, about 1 million of whom are unregistered, according to a 2012 report by researchers for the International Organization of Migration (IOM) and the Migration Policy Institute, a U.S. think tank. Most come from the neighboring countries of Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the State Department.
Many migrant workers – especially those in the country illegally – are at risk of being trafficked as sex workers or for slave-like labor on fishing boats.
Also, Thailand has long been a transit country for people being smuggled or trafficked to third countries, including Bangladeshi migrants and Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar.
Thailand launched a crackdown on illegal immigration in May 2015 after 32 graves of suspected undocumented migrants were discovered at traffickers’ camps in the jungle in Songkhla, near Thailand’s border with Malaysia.
As a result of the crackdown, 92 suspects including a three-star general are being prosecuted. Their trial is the largest human-trafficking case in Thailand’s history.
Matthew Smith, an expert on illegal migration in Southeast Asia, told BenarNews in April that in some respects the situation for victims of trafficking had “improved drastically” over the past year.
“This time last year there were several thousand Rohingya being held in torture camps in Thailand. Today, those camps no longer exist,” said Smith, director of the NGO Fortify Rights.
However, he said, not all graves sites had been discovered and investigated.
“I've personally visited grave sites that were not included in the discoveries last year. We have reason to believe bodies litter the terrain in certain parts of Songkhla and other areas in the south. Thai authorities would be wise to continue the investigation, which at present is closed.”


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