Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman. (Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR) |
June 19, 2012
Shannon Service and Becky Palmstrom
NPR (National Public Radio, USA)
Thailand supplies a large portion
of America's seafood. But Thailand's giant fishing fleet is chronically
short of up to 60,000 fishermen per year, leaving captains scrambling to
find crew. Human traffickers have stepped in, selling captives from Cambodia and Myanmar to the captains for a few hundred dollars each. Once at sea, the men often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land.
First of two parts
Cambodian Vannak Prum's destiny
changed in a dirt-road town called Malai. It's a Cambodian outpost on
the border with Thailand that is known for its involvement in the
trafficking of human beings.
Prum arrived in Malai seven
years ago searching for work. His wife was pregnant, and he needed money
for the hospital bill. He intended to work for two months, but ended up
meeting a human trafficker.
A few days later, Prum was sold
onto a Thai fishing boat the length of a basketball court, where he
worked in tight conditions with 10 men. He says he didn't reach land
again for three years.
"I didn't get paid," he says. "I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night."
As Thailand grows more
prosperous, its citizens are shunning fishing work in which, even in the
best cases, men are away for months chasing dwindling fish stocks.
Injuries and fatalities are
common, and seasickness — at least in the beginning — is constant.
Wicharn Sirichai-Ekawat owns a small fleet of fishing boats and consults
with the National Fisheries Association of Thailand.
"There are about 150,000 men
working on the boats, and about 40 percent of them are using foreign
labor," he says. "We depend on them."
Some of these men are recruited
legally, but others, like Prum, are sold into bondage. They report
20-hour days under mind-numbing conditions: minimal fresh food or water,
no medicine apart from aspirin, cramped bunks, unsafe conditions and
the relentless smell of fish.
"Sometimes the winch cable would
accidentally cut off," Prum says. "If any of us stayed in front of it,
the cable would injure or even kill us."
Ship bosses pose their own hazards. "One man's head was cut off and thrown in the water," Prum says. "I saw it."
Reports Of Abuse, Killings
The United Nations Inter-Agency
Project on Human Trafficking interviewed fishermen on Thai boats who are
from Myanmar, also known as Burma; 59 percent said they witnessed a
murder by their captain.
The fishermen also said that
captains often give workers drugs — mainly amphetamines — so they will
keep working through the night.
The fishing boats are able to
stay at sea for extended periods thanks to a network of shuttle boats,
or motherships, that come and pick up the fish that's been caught and
deliver fuel, food, ice and other supplies that fishing boats need to
keep going.
Ultimately, Thai fish products show up on American shelves in a variety of ways, from fish sticks to pet food.
The Thai boats catch an
estimated 1 in 5 pounds of American mackerel and sardines, and a good
portion of anchovies on American pizzas. Thailand's two biggest seafood
exports — farmed shrimp and tuna — are not implicated in these
particular abuses, but have labor and environmental concerns of their
own.
Now 33, Prum looks out the window in Malai, perplexed by the changes that have transformed the place over the past seven years.
"When I was here last, there was a roundabout," he says. "Now I'm lost, because they removed the traffic circle."
It's midnight, and Prum cruises slowly through the dark. He is looking for his trafficker.
A Network Of Traffickers
The man who sold Vannak Prum
into these conditions is part of a loose network of human traffickers
that stretches from the bustling ports of Thailand, deep into remote
villages in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar.
Malai's district chief, Tep
Khunnal, says traffickers move people through the area's illegal border
crossings with the help of the Cambodian military and police.
Stranded At Sea
"I don't know if the Thai side
takes money," he says, "but I know they take it on the Cambodian side."
Khunnal says he wants to address the problem, but too many people profit
from human smuggling.
In Prum's case, he met a taxi
driver who convinced him to search for better paying work in Thailand.
When the driver brought him to Malai, Prum was introduced to a man who
was a trafficker, but Prum got cold feet and tried to back out.
The driver, however, presented
Prum with a $12 tab for the trip, which Prum couldn't pay. The
trafficker then stepped in and paid the fare, and that effectively
sealed Prum's fate.
The trafficker then sold Prum to
another set of smugglers in Thailand. The driver turned a profit, the
trafficker turned a profit, the local money changer turned a profit —
and Prum was locked up in a Thai port.
Prum pressed his face against a crack in the building.
"I saw the sea and boats," he says. "That's when I realized I was trafficked."
Officials Get A Cut
Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says Thai police also profit off of men like Prum.
"Most of the time when migrants
are arrested, the police aren't planning to make a case or hand them
over to immigration, as they're required to do," he says. "What they're
doing is holding them and then trying to extort money out of them."
Thai police aren't alone.
"Every part of the Thai officers
will benefit from this — the province, police, labor officers," says
former Marine Police Commander Surapol Thuanthong. "They all get bribes
from illegal migrants and related businesses."
Thuanthong says Thailand's
Marine Police have tried to convince the Thai government to make the
workers legal so they can be tracked and protected — but the sheer
number of undocumented workers makes it impossible.
"[The government] says it's too many and will affect the stability of the country," he says. "So they don't do anything."
Building A System To Track Workers
Sirichai-Ekawat says the
National Fisheries Association of Thailand is trying to establish
recruitment centers to register and track workers willing to work Thai
boats.
If it works, legalizing workers
could undercut the black market in men. But it's too soon to tell if
that plan will work. In the meantime, men like Prum continue to be sold
onto the seas against their will.
This river of men weighs heavily on Prum's mind as he winds through Malai.
"I wanted to come help so
Cambodians wouldn't go work in a foreign country," he says. "And now you
see everything has changed completely — the road, the house —
everything."
Prum didn't find his trafficker. He slumps against the car door.
If he had found him, what would he have done?
"I was angry before," says Prum,
"because he did a bad thing. But now I don't feel any anger or revenge
at all. I wanted to find him and tell him not to do this job anymore
because it does harm. "
With that, the car turns around
and drives past the empty money-changing stalls and the restaurants with
cots for border-crossers set up in back. Prum keeps his gaze straight
ahead as he leaves Malai. He doesn't say a word.
Several groups are helping
ex-fishermen get back to their home countries and are supporting them
once they get there. They include Tenaganita, Healthcare Center for Children, the Labor Protection Network and LICADHO. The Made in a Free World app lets you ask brands about labor practices in their supply chain as you shop.
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