The year 2015 marked a turning point in the fight against human trafficking in the Thai fishing industry, when a rescue operation of stranded Burmese, Thai, Cambodian, and Lao fishermen in Indonesian waters brought international attention to human trafficking in Southeast Asia. The rescue operations were the culmination of a series of exposés published by the Associated Press, which chronicled how the Thai fishing industry was exploiting workers in slave-like conditions to supply seafood to American supermarkets and restaurants.
But while international pressure and attention forced the Royal Thai Government to enact important reforms to address human trafficking in the seafood industry, this was not the end of the story for the thousands of Thai fishermen who returned home after years, sometimes even decades, of abuse. The Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN), a Thai labour rights NGO based in the port city of Samut Sakhon, Thailand, has witnessed first-hand the numerous obstacles returned fishermen face after their rescue and repatriation.
Obstacles in the prosecution process
The failures of trafficking in persons (TIP) prosecutions begin with victim identification. Despite the implementation of important reforms in the past years, only 7 TIP cases involving workers in the fishing sector were under investigation in 2017. Effective victim identification is hindered by the poor training of law enforcement officials, who may “fail to recognize non-physical indicators of trafficking, such as non-payment of wages and document confiscation”, according to the 2018 US TIP Report.
