No Safe Passage
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“Thailand is not about people, it's about diversity. People are a very important resource to build a country, no matter where you're from, or who you are, right?”
Born in Thailand’s Deep South, near the Malay border, Koreeyor Manuchae emerged from a world of layered identities— Muslim, Malay, Thai— to become an outspoken defenders of migrant and refugee rights. She stands at the intersection of policy and pain, where the lives of the stateless and the silenced demand voice.
Manuchae's journey began almost by accident— a volunteer posting she stumbled upon after law school. At the time, she knew little about human rights or migrant labor. But when she arrived at a foundation in Mae Sot, the bustling town straddling the Thai-Myanmar border, her understanding of justice transformed. She met people fleeing poverty and repression, learned about Myanmar’s 1988 uprising and the enduring consequences of political trauma, and realized that her legal education meant little if it did not reach those excluded from its protection. This awakening became the compass for her life’s work.
Initially, her tasks were modest— helping workers submit wage complaints or understand their basic rights— but each case revealed a deeper web of exploitation and neglect. She began to see that migration from Myanmar was not just an economic movement but an act of survival, and that Thailand’s prosperity depended on the very people its laws marginalized. “If without migrant workers, without Myanmar people, Mae Sot will be nothing,” she declares. “The market will be empty!”
She emphasizes the contradiction of a nation that owes its development to migrant labor while vilifying the workers themselves. In the cities, migrants are often portrayed as criminals or disease carriers, even though they sustain Thailand’s agriculture, construction, and domestic industries. To her, this double standard exposes the hypocrisy of a system that thrives on the contributions of those it refuses to recognize. Yet despite the prejudice and misinformation, Koreeyor remained hopeful. “I do believe 85% of Thai people still understand why we need migrant workers,” she said. “They know how much they contribute.”
Yet that existing prejudice, she explains, is deeply rooted. Centuries of nationalism have conditioned many Thais to fear the Burmese as perpetual outsiders. She described this as a moral sickness, a fear perpetuated by sensationalist media and online influencers who turn social media into a theater of hate. A particularly striking example was a viral incident where a video of migrant schoolchildren singing Myanmar’s national anthem provoked outrage so severe that the school was forced to close. Reflecting on this, she remarks, “[Some Thai think] ‘You are not us!’ And then they start to build many barriers to protect themselves. But protect yourself from what?”
Manuchae's criticism of Thailand’s migrant management system is unflinching. The legal routes for gaining work status are so bureaucratic, expensive, and slow that people fall into illegality out of necessity. Corruption and administrative paralysis combine to create the very problems the state claims to be combating. She argues that the system should be redesigned entirely— made simple, affordable, and swift, so that migrants can access their legal status with ease rather than dread. Without such reforms, she warns, the cycle of illegality and exploitation would continue endlessly. For her, this isn’t an abstract policy issue— it’s about the basic dignity of people who cross the border seeking a chance to live. “People do not come to Thailand to work because we [have freedom] of association,” she adds. “They come to have a better life!”
Manuchae’s most well-known struggle came with the notorious chicken farm case—a landmark in Thailand’s fight against modern slavery. The migrant workers, trapped in barns packed with tens of thousands of chickens, slept beside the animals, worked around the clock, and earned far below the legal wage. They were too afraid to leave, their passports held by the employer. When they finally spoke out, the owners retaliated with defamation suits and the absurd claim that Wi-Fi access proved the workers were free. The court’s ruling in favor of the workers was a rare triumph—an acknowledgment that freedom isn’t defined by unlocked doors, and that coercion can exist without visible chains. For Manuchae, it marked more than a legal victory: it was a moment when justice broke through a system built to resist it.
Even so, she cautions that victories like these are fragile. Courts frequently blur the line between forced labor and human trafficking, often favoring employers. What should be recognized as systematic abuse is too easily dismissed as a contractual dispute. Each legal win feels temporary, vulnerable to reversal.
Beyond the exploited laborers, she also speaks about the stateless communities trapped in refugee camps across Thailand. Established more than forty years ago as temporary shelters, these nine camps have evolved into generational prisons—places where residents live without the right to work, travel, or claim citizenship. She describes a process so punitive that asylum seekers must surrender to immigration authorities, pay immense bail fees, and endure indefinite waiting periods under a screening mechanism so restrictive that only a handful have ever succeeded. What is officially labeled protection, she observes, functions instead as a new form of captivity. The cruelty of deportation policies, she adds, epitomizes this failure. “Do not send people back to their country to face danger!” she pleads. For Manuchae, safety is the most basic human right—and any policy that denies it betrays the essence of justice.
The military coup in Myanmar in 2021 has only deepened this crisis. Waves of new refugees— activists, journalists, teachers, and former politicians— crossed into Thailand, seeking safety. Many found themselves in a cruel paradox, forced to renew passports issued by the very junta that had driven them out. She views this as the ultimate expression of injustice: the same system that stripped people of their freedom still determining their right to exist! Thailand’s refusal to update its laws, driven by fear of uncontrolled migration, leaves both nations trapped in mutual instability. For her, the futures of Thailand and Myanmar are inseparable; without democracy across the border, Thailand will never find peace along it.
Manuchae's insights stem not only from advocacy but from lived experience. As a Malay Muslim woman from Thailand’s Deep South, she understands what it means to be treated as only partly belonging. Her accent and culture often mark her as different, and she has faced questions about her national identity. Yet she embraces both her heritage and her citizenship, seeing in that duality the essence of Thailand’s true makeup. “Thailand is not about people,” she says. “It’s about diversity.”
Her activism also extends beyond migrant issues. She successfully campaigned to overturn an outdated rule that required female lawyers to wear skirts in court— a fight that, for her, symbolized the broader resistance against imposed identities and social expectations.
Despite years of struggle, Manuchae remains steadfast rather than disheartened. She imagines a Thailand built on empathy instead of exclusion, one that sees refugees and migrants not as burdens but as contributors, and where the law protects rather than punishes. In her view, the border should not stand as a wall of fear but serve as a bridge of understanding between two nations scarred by shared wounds.
She often speaks of the need to recognize humanity before nationality, believing that identity is defined not by documents but by the simple fact of existence. Or as she says, “We need to care about fundamental things like fundamental right for human rights as well.”