Transcript: Episode #239: Broken Dreams in the Land of Smiles
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0:11
Your move should be well known a mushy feeling and I also you know ma i tell you also your ma logomark on on I don't need them on me when you do Billy oh she won't she'll do her only turn off happy so yeah, so not under such Oh yeah. Away should be dominate Yo Yo Ma Yun todo Toria clear sob we doesn't even show up to worry
0:36
It's the morning commute in Yangon swept the third Township. garment workers cram onto trucks for the ride to nearby factories. Many workers say that stagnant wages and rapid inflation make it difficult for them to make ends meet.
0:56
There's usually no shortage of work or laborers for farms in pop pride district in western Thailand. Many farmers here employ migrants from across the border in Myanmar to work for fields.
Host 1:14
Hi there and thanks for listening. If you're enjoying our podcast and have a recommendation about someone you think that we should have on to share their voice and journey with the world. By all means, let us know it could be an aid worker, monastic author, journalist, Doctor resistance leader, really anyone with some tie or another to the ongoing situation and Myanmar to offer up a name. Go to our website insight myanmar.org And let us know. But for now, just sit back and take a listen to today's podcast.
Brad 2:50
And welcome back. Today I'm joined by Phil from Human Rights Watch. And we're going to be looking at yet another largely ignored element of the ongoing crisis. And that is the plight not so much just of refugees, but in fact of migrant workers, specifically Myanmar, migrant workers going into Thailand, and there is a Human Rights Watch report on this, which we'll be linking down below, which is pretty, pretty intense, and she has some very harrowing stories. But before we get into all of that, Phil, I'd like to thank you very much for joining our program, I'd like to give you the chance to introduce yourself and your work for our audience. Well,
Phil Robertson 3:24
thank you very much for having me on the program. My name is Phil Robertson, I'm the Deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. And one of the things I've been passionate about and worked on and done research about is the plight of migrant workers who have come to Thailand, from Myanmar, but also from Cambodia, from Laos, and increasingly actually now from Vietnam. You know, Thailand is a country which has a rapidly aging population. It doesn't have the workers it needs to work particularly in the menial labor sectors of things like plantations or livestock raising, or increasingly even now factories and those dirty and dangerous jobs are increasingly being done by migrant workers. The the number of Burmese who are in the country are probably in over 2 million. But the numbers are actually, you know, never firmly known because of the real problems with the Thai regulation system in the monitoring. It is clear that 80% of the migrant workers, who overall would probably estimate in the four to 5 million range are from Myanmar. So the vast preponderance of migrant workers who have come into Thailand over the years are from Myanmar. And this is not a new phenomenon. This is a phenomenon that goes back to the mid 1990s When you know 1995 When Thailand first authorized migrant workers from neighboring countries to legally work in Thailand. But what we've seen Is despite various regulations, despite laws setting out how the migrants can work and what they're supposed to be paid. And, you know, they're supposed to be paid the same as ties, and they're supposed to receive the same treatment that coverage on the laws ties, is that simply doesn't happen. That, in fact, many of these employers are taking advantage of a sort of migrant worker premium where they can pay sub minimum wages, they can force these people to work over holidays, they won't provide them with sick leave. They've sometimes worked them overnight, particularly in some industries, that are seasonal, such as for instance, producing woolen products for the west of Europe, the knitting factories in Mesa and other parts of the of the Thai Myanmar border. So you know, it is a a system that exists in law, existing regulations. But the real idea is that there is impunity to violate the rights and abuse migrant workers. And that is what we consistently see. Added to this is also the fact that there are many migrant workers who are not legally in Thailand. And we expect that this will rise over the coming months as more and more people from Myanmar flee the mandatory conscription law of the state administration Council, and try to escape into Thailand. And once they arrive here, then try to figure out what can they do to support themselves so that they can survive and there's going to be more and more undocumented migrant workers coming in. And then there's going to be even more people who are exactly in the Thai system in the bilateral Myanmar to Thailand, migrant sending system will drop out of that system, because the state administration Council is now starting to require those people pay taxes on their earnings in order to be able to renew their passports and renew their documents. And a lot of migrant workers like most of the people in Burma, are unhappy with the sack administration, the sack military junta and don't want to support them. And so I think a lot of people are going to fall out of status, in part to avoid these unjust arbitrary taxes that are now being pushed on to the migrant workers by increasingly desperate military junta that needs to get money, anyway, can't. So it is a very, very grim situation, a very difficult situation for migrant workers. You know, they're not earning a lot of money. They face continued harassment and extortion by Thai officials, particularly by the Thai police. We have cases of people being beaten, people being killed, migrant women being sexually assaulted, including by police. So you know, I mean, the litany of abuses against migrant workers just goes on and on and on. And they have very few courses for redress. You know, even though the the Thai government says that the law applies equally to migrant workers, most migrant workers don't know what the law says. They're afraid to approach someone who would be in charge of actually implementing that law. And in fact, I've documented case where, you know, you know, a employer was beating a migrant worker in the presence of the inspector from the Ministry of Labor. So it's not like the Thai officials are really standing up for these migrant workers in the first place. But then also, many of these informal situations are ones where the law may exist somewhere off on ether, but the reality is what the boss says and what the foreman says and what the police outside the gate say. And those are the realities that marketing workers face.
Brad 8:51
Absolutely. So I think we're going to have to touch on a lot of those sort of, you know, one by one fashion, but you're you're painting a very harrowing picture of migrant workers. And I'm, I'm hoping that we can sort of look at the the context here, because my understanding is and maybe flawed, but my understanding is that in Thailand, the the plight of even Thai citizens working for certain companies has been pretty, pretty grim. I'm recalling the case of fishermen, Thai fishermen, who were basically taken as prisoners or if you like, slaves, and they were they were taken to foreign waters, Malaysia, Indonesia and so on. Many of them dying at sea being you know, buried in islands or thrown overboard and, and it took a lot of pressure for the Thai government to step up even to protect the interests of their own citizens and and to regulate these these companies and these industries, to make sure that the individuals working are working have their free will they do have appropriate documentation and paperwork and they are being compensated. What is what is the general attitude towards abusive and exploitative labor practices within the Thai context so that we can draw parallels or comparisons to how specifically the migrant workers are being treated?
Phil Robertson 10:12
Well, it's a good question. There's a couple of things to know about the Thai labor sector. The first point is that much of the work is informal. As many as 60% of Thai workers are informal sectors, that means like, for instance, agriculture, which is not regulated by the labor law, that means also issues related to sub contracting, it could be also factory work that is being done at home, you know, through through, you know, home based work. There's a lot of vendors in the market people who in fact, are not, you know, technically seen as being held by employers, and then all the various different small and medium enterprises which escape effective purview by the labor law. It is also quite clear that the Ministry of Labor in Thailand systematically fails to effectively enforce just about any of the major labor laws. In fact, their whole Florida Pocus is one where they are a bit like the fire department, the only time they actually come out of their office, the only time they really step up, is when they are getting a complaint that some sort of violation has taken place. And that requires a sense that people are prepared to complain, they're, they're prepared to face possible retaliation by complaining because that is often what happens to Thai workers. But you know, for our Thai, they would get fired. For a migrant worker, it can be much worse. I mean, I've interviewed migrant workers who have asked for their rights, and been fed met with a foreman who stabbed someone in the head with a with a screwdriver for demanding their back wages. You know, I've talked to migrant workers who were seeking compensation for an injury, where an employer pulled a gun out of the desk for where they were sitting at and basically said, Do you really want the compensation? Or do you want to talk to my gun here? You know, it is, it is Wild West, it is really a situation where the actual employers can do what they want. What we have seen, is a real weakness in labor organization, labor unions, you know, they exist in some of the larger enterprises. But when you get down to small, small parts of the economy or small enterprises, they're not there. And they're entirely absent in many areas where migrant workers are employed, for instance, like the food processing sector, where, you know, the very anti union, employers will do anything they can to keep the unions out of the factory. And migrant workers, certainly, if they're part of that their market workers are allowed to be a members of a union. But only Thai nationals are allowed to organize or formally establish a union or lead a union. And that leads to situations where in certain sectors of the economy where there's very little tie working force there, but it's mostly migrant workers, that there's no unions at all. And so there's no collective representation. There's no ability of migrant workers to band together to defend themselves, except through sometimes with occasional wildcat strikes. What's happened, for instance, if there's particularly grievious, abuse, abuse, you know, a foreman, for instance, who's really been abusing or sexually harassing women workers, sometimes there's an accident at construction site, where, you know, people are killed and compensation is demanded in compensation is not forthcoming. So all the workers staged a protest in front of the factory office, or the construction site. And you know, that invariably, that involves a police response. Sometimes there's a negotiation to that result in some sort of agreement for compensation, sometimes the police just start arresting everybody. And, and that's the end of it. You know, so it is really wild west, in there is a lack of effective trade union representation for many workers across much of the country. And so, migrant workers are left either on their own devices or trying to turn to the handful of Thai NGOs that work with migrant workers to try to gain justice through the intervention of those NGOs.
Brad 14:42
And so, I mean, the, the way you're describing it sounds very akin to slavery or, or something like, you know, indebted servitude or something like this. So, it seems that they're working. They're working in horrific conditions. They're being beaten and abused, and they're apparently not even being given a proper compensate some compensation but not the full compensation to which they are entitled. So the very important question at this point is, do they have the right? And do they have the functional ability to pick up and walk away from the people who are treating them this way? Or is it the case that the alternatives are just starvation or returning to Myanmar?
Phil Robertson 15:25
No, the difficulty is that if they come if they come through a formal labor process, which is the preferred Ministry of Labor process, where there's an MOU between Thailand and labor, sending governments like Myanmar, where people would go through a broker in Myanmar, and be then sent to Thailand, and then basically received at a workplace, and that this is all done formally, in those kinds of situations, there's a big problem, that the migrant workers are effectively bound to their employer, that it becomes almost impossible for them to leave that point, there is not employment choice or employment portability. You know, a migrant worker can't just say, well, I this, this worker, this, this, this employer is abusive, I want to leave and just then take up and leave. If they do, they'll lose their status. And they paid a lot of money for that status through brokerage fees. And a lot of times there's a debt bondage arrangement where, for instance, you know, people don't have the money to pay to get to these jobs. So they're received owing a debt to a broker or an employer, that they have to pay down via deductions from their paycheck. When that sort of situation happens, you know, people are not free to leave and people, for instance, lose their passports, passports get confiscated by employers. Employers claim all this is for safekeeping, we're not, you know, we don't, you know, mean to take it away. And it's technically illegal under Thai law, to hold a migrant workers passport, but it happens everywhere. Time and time again. And, you know, excuses are made in the Ministry of Labor officials are not really policing it. So you know, there is a debt bondage. Sort of reality here that people are, are being ultimately compelled to remain with an abusive employer, even if they want to leave me a better system would be like to give someone a five year visa, allow that person like any other person to be able to change employers at will. And then, you know, various different employers that were abusive would have a hard time finding like a worker who would allow the market to work in conjunction with trying to promote labor, respect, labor rights, respecting behaviors, but the Thai system doesn't work that way. The there's a there's a Thai approach to migrant workers that views them through a national security lens, and sees them as a potential threat. And from that, you get a system which uses employers as a de facto controller for migrant labor. In fact, when something happens with a migrant workers, the first question that an official arriving on the scene will ask is, okay, who is the employer of this person, because that employer is expected to keep track of people and make things very orderly. But the bottom line is that it is a restrictive controlling situation, where people are, in fact, not permitted to change employers, unless you are willing to pay money. So you can you can pay off your employer to let you go. But you know, sometimes that's going to be a bribe, that would be equivalent to a month or two months worth of wages. It's very, very difficult. And so, you know, there's a lot of reforms immediate need to be taken, but because the Thai state wants to keep these people under control, they support employer control over the migrant workers. And there's a nexus of influence and control over migrant workers. That is that comes from between the police and the employers, where you know, the police or the threat that's outside the gate, in the employers are told, okay, you need to pay us off and keep us in a situation where they're, they're protected. If a policeman arrests for instance, a migrant worker who was outside the factory, a lot of times that person won't have their official documents because it's being held by the factory management. That then means that they have a photocopy the police will claim Well, that's a fake thing, and they'll arrest them. And they'll take them to the Police Lockup where abuses occur. And then they'll finally hand over a phone and say, call your employer to come get you out. And when the employer arrives, they'll be expected to pay a bribe to the police to release that worker even if the worker is illegally in the country. And then when the worker gets back to the factory, that cost of that bribe that the employer had to pay to the police is then added to the debt that the worker owes. So it all comes back onto the head of the migrant worker.
Brad 20:15
This is, I mean, this is insidious, like what you're describing here is far more than just a lacks system of government oversight and regulation. And just rampant abuses for the sake of abuses. You're describing a very well designed, concentrated system, which is intended, as far as I'm understanding it, first and foremost, to keep this entire population subjugated. Which is the best word that I can find for it. Is that, is that an accurate representation of what's going on?
Phil Robertson 20:51
Unfortunately, it is, I mean, I think that there is a sense that they want migrant workers to work. They want them to work under the coordinate systems and the conditions that are provided by the employers, and they're not interested in migrant worker rights at all. You know, and this, this reflects, for instance, the migrant workers, inability to, for instance, have protests or demonstrations. We've had cases where, for instance, people were demonstrating for democracy, and the police will come and arrest everybody saying you don't have the right to speak out here. You don't have the right to associate with others. You know, you are here to work and work only get back to work, or we will arrest you and started. You know, it is the police also I mean, the police view these migrant workers as essentially walking ATMs. You know, I remember a very clear case, a friend of mine, who was a US embassy official was down in Vietnam. You know, he was in a group of migrant workers in a in a room one of their were their accommodations. He was talking and interviewing these people to find out what they're facing. This was in the early evening and during the course of the discussion on Sunday banging on the door of the of the room. And you know, the room is pretty crowded. So you know, the people banging on the door couldn't really come into the room and see everybody was there. And they opened the door and it's two drunken immigration officers who immediately you know, they've been obviously off on a bender and drinking some beer and then ran out of money. So they come to like, shake down some migrants and get some money so they can continue drinking. And my friend who was the American embassy official, you know, stood up, and perfect. I basically said to him, What are you guys doing here? What do you Why are you here? And they're like, you can't be here. Who the hell are you? And he pulls out his US Embassy card and hands it over. And they both look at each other in terror. And they ran away. And the migrant workers cheered. I mean, this was the biggest thing that ever happened. You know, it was it was the bullies being shot shown up by someone else, you know, but this is the thing it is bullying, can coercive rights, abusing extortion behavior that basically treats migrants as less than human who can be abused in any way, shape or form? I mean, I talked to a guy who was basically working as an adjunct to a police in the Mesa area, outside Mesa, 48 kilometer area. You know, there was a police substation, or what they call a police box there. And he said, Look, you know, over the course of the years that he had worked as a sort of gang member working with the police, you know, he knew of at least a half a dozen rapes that had been committed by police of migrant women in the back room of that of that police station. So you have you have, you know, Thai police raping Burmese, migrant women. You know, I mean, one of the one of the real curses, like if you're, if you're an attractive Burmese, migrant woman, you gotta be careful here. You know, it's not safe. And you know, they will. There's other cases in places similar to con where, you know, women and others told me that, you know, women attractive women were being detained by the police, and told they had to pay bribes. If they didn't have the bribe, then they were said, Well, you can work it off at the local hotel. That's,
Brad 24:31
and this is this is horrific. I was going to sort of ask you to compare in as much as you're able to the situation of migrant workers in Thailand, to the situation of migrant workers in in, you know, wealthy Arab Gulf states where we also know it's very appalling, but it sounds that it sounds like this is on another level, you know, when the police are themselves perpetrating terror, I mean, if you'll forgive the comparison, it sounds very much Like the period in, in southern US History During an after Reconstruction, when, instead of slavery, they just kept rounding up black people accusing them of arbitrary crimes and saddling them with court costs that they could never pay off and then effectively keeping them in in a perpetual cycle of debt bondage. And so nothing actually changed it is this is genuinely horrific. Is there any way that these people can turn to like, I assume them? Yeah, my embassy is pretty much useless at this point.
Phil Robertson 25:34
No one trust no one trusted Myanmar embassy and they won't go there for assistance or help. I mean, the Myanmar embassy, you know, is well known for corruption itself, you know, even getting appointments and things like that you have to there's brokers that operate at the embassy that you have to approach a broker to basically get the the embassy to provide you with basic services. You know, so the Myanmar embassy is hopeless. I mean, all you really have is a number of the Thai NGOs that are prepared to work with migrant workers and help them and you know, there are some companies out there and so moves upon are some different places. They're, by and large, they're few and far between there, they're just not enough people on the ground to help with with all these cases. So in many cases, you know, a migrant worker, literally faces situation where they're there, they often just have to flee the flee or to hide. You know, I did interviews of migrant workers in Phuket and hung out in areas that were affected by the 2004. Tsunami. And what was interesting there, in addition to the fact that when tsunami was coming ashore, and they heard yelling that most of the migrant workers thought it was a police raid, not a natural disaster. And there were many, many migrant workers who are killed and never, never accounted for by that natural disaster, but the construction in Panama, particularly, people would go work for these construction firm building these resorts. And they, they'd be there for a month and they wouldn't get paid, they'd be told they were going to get paid next month, and there'd be a second month and they wouldn't get paid. And then a third month they come in and then they face a dilemma. Okay, do I continue to stay somewhere where I'm promised to be paid, and get the money back wages with an old? Or do I try to go somewhere else and try to find a place where actually the employer will pay me for my work. And, you know, what would happen is when they when they finally found employer that was willing to pay, the work would go out, and everybody would try to go and work for that employer. You know, this is just basic payment of the wages that people were earning. And, you know, wasn't even, for instance, for minimum wage, it was going to be like, probably half the minimum wage. But, but there's an opportunity to not pay, I mean, the migrant workers, they know where they're gonna go complaint, what are they going to do? You know, you know, and the expectation is that nine out of 10, migrant workers will, they're not payable finally slink away and try to find something else rather than trying to confront the employer. And that's right, because the one thing is when you stand up for your rights as a market worker, you try to protest, you try to demand compensation and rights and things like that, you immediately face retaliation. That was the one thing that is consistent along things that retaliation for migrant workers standing up is a is a big part of the problem here. And that's why the migrant workers will, for instance, try to go to a Thai NGO, so that they have someone on their side and the Thai NGO can then help them face off and face push back. And basically go to, for instance, the Ministry of Labor Office and get a serious hearing in the Ministry of Labor Office of the Thai NGO shows up there and says, we've got all these cases and things like that. And if you don't do something, we're going to have to talk to the media, then the Ministry of Labor all sudden says, Oh, God, we got to start working on this, we got to have to try to find a real solution.
Brad 29:11
So media is the way to go about it. Like the film ministry, one of the
Phil Robertson 29:16
ways for sure, that's one of the ways. I mean, yeah, but you know, I mean, it's not enough in and of itself. You know, you have to, you have to be able to, for instance, figure out like, Okay, if it's a garment factory like in Mesa, are they producing something that's being exported overseas? If it is, then you know, look at the supply chain, try to figure out who in the supply chain, we care about what how they're being treated, and then proceed from that. You're trying to find ways to build leverage to get the time Ministry of Labor people to do their jobs point one to ensure that there's no retaliation against some migrant workers and to ultimately try to get some sense of joy status.
Brad 30:03
So, so let's look at them the sorts of more abstract things. Let's look at the legal status. What theoretically, what is the status because we're not talking about refugees, we're not talking about people who have crossed for the purpose of seeking asylum, which, in Thailand, I believe is just technically, just illegally crossing the border, because they're not signatories to the Refugee Convention. But these people, I assume, have gone through a process. They're documented, I assume that they are kept on some sort of Thai Ministry of Labor central registry, they would have, you know, visa and all that sort of stuff. So what is their status in law.
Phil Robertson 30:41
So they're technically temporarily working in in Thailand. And it's, it's done in in in connection with regulations and cabinet resolutions that would allow them to exist as an exemption to the Immigration Act. Now, then they would basically get get a visa issued to them. I mean, what Thailand wants to do is they want these people to have passports, and they want to have a visa stamp placed in the passport. And then they want the people to have a work permit, and a health insurance cover. So it's very bureaucratic. It's very bureaucratic. And the Ministry of Labor loves the fact that it's bureaucratic, because the Department of Employment which oversees this makes a lot of money from from bribes from brokers, because the system itself in terms of the registration system, in terms of the health system, in terms of the work permits, all that is so complicated, that any factory with a significant number of migrant workers who are trying to do the right thing, and have everybody registered, quickly realize that the human resources department is not going to be able to handle all these issues, and they hire brokers to manage it. Those brokers are in fact, paying money to the Department of Employment to sort of grease the skids and make sure the approval process goes quickly and efficiently. And so you know, it's paid to play. That's what we're looking at, even in when you're talking about legally registered migrant workers. And then those legally migrant regular registered migrant workers, because they're from Myanmar are now facing the problem of the Myanmar embassy saying you have to start paying US taxes in order for us to do anything with your documents. And that's an issue, that's a problem, you know, that that people don't want to do that. And people are afraid to have all their details, you know, registered with the Ministry of of with with the with the Myanmar embassy. They're also scared to be seen as paying that tax, in part because there are other people were strongly opposed to the military regime and Myanmar would view paying that tax as being collaborative, you know, being a collaborators with the military junta.
Brad 32:58
So it's, it's a pretty bad thing. And just on collaboration with the junta there was a point I'm just wondering whether you can shed any light on what's happened with this. The the larger number of migrant workers, of course, are hoping to be paid salaries that are significantly better than what they could only Myanmar and so they send a portion of their salary back to Myanmar as remittance payments. I do call that either earlier this year or end of last year, the military dictatorship wanted to place a tax on all remittance payments. And they they were insisting that the brokers on the Thai side actually enact this remittance tax for them. Do you? Do you have any indicator as to whether that was ever taken seriously on the Thai side?
Phil Robertson 33:48
Look, the ties the ties don't really care about how remittances are sent back to Myanmar. You know what, what the Myanmar junta is trying to do is trying to force migrant workers to send money back through junta connected or controlled banks, instead of through the informal Home D system, which many people prefer instead. And because of that there's a there's an ongoing contention. It's not clear to me that the the actual junta is going to be able to compel people to finally use their banks because the exchange trade is is worse. And you know, the situation is one where people are really not not not prepared to go through that system, because they're, they're worried that their money might get confiscated. Yeah, it's a big issue. It's a big problem.
Brad 34:46
And so, you mentioned before, Thai NGOs that are that are able to at least be contacted and able to to do something, what is the situation because the the impression that I get and then maybe and completely wrong. I'm not familiar really with Thai, social and governmental happenings. But my The impression I get is that NGOs are not really favored by the legal system in Thailand. They they're kind of seen as rabble rousers and sort of trying to find trouble. Do these NGOs have sort of the freedom to operate the way that they want to operate? Can they can they, you know, be public and they bring attention to these problems? Can they file suit against the Ministry of Labor? Or do they themselves face sort of discrimination and obstacles?
Phil Robertson 35:37
In most cases, the Thai NGOs are able to hold their own. I mean, they've got they've got a ability and experience in dealing with the Thai government. They know how to talk to the media, they know how to represent migrant workers, you know, these, many of them, they're registered as foundations are. So you know, they have they have legal operating status, you know, they're prepared to step up. I mean, I think that they're, in some cases, they're getting hit with these strategic litigation against public participation cases to try to silence them. You know, that's particularly from employers who like for instance, view them as being problematic. So we had the case, where a number of representatives of Fortify Rights, which is one of these NGOs were, you know, sued by the tama Cosette chicken farms, in part because they were representing migrant workers who were very clearly underpaid with faced abusive conditions. You know, and ultimately, that that chicken farm was fined by the Ministry of Labor, it became enough of a case of the Minister of Labor got in there and actually did an investigation and found that in fact, there was significant violations of the labor protection act and ordered the company to pay compensation to the workers for holiday pay and overtime pay that had not been paid. But you know, that didn't stop that employer from them filing criminal libel suits against the NGO to try to retaliate. Ultimately, it just caused a lot of angst and consternation. But the courts have consistently found that that these libel cases have no merit and have thrown them out. But it still requires the NGOs having to go to court to clear their names and have to fight this and it's, it's, it's very intimidating.
Brad 37:39
Do they do they have to pay the legal costs or if the case is thrown out without merit? Can they they have legal damage, like legal costs of water to them? That usually does not happen? Okay. So it's still a way to financially bleed?
Phil Robertson 37:53
Yeah, so the way to financially penalized and harass we're marketing migrants and their defenders by dragging him into the courts on, you know, cases that have no merit that are basically bogus cases. So
Brad 38:07
let's, let's turn that into to the actual report. So you've you've got this report, very aptly entitled From the tiger to the crocodile, which if I read it correctly, as it is a translation of a Thai idiom, which seems to be the equivalent of out of the frying pan and into the fire. And this is I know I've I've used this word before, but it is harrowing. You describing here, you know, cases where I believe there was one case where a a woman saw her husband shot dead in front of her. Yes, and she was sexually assaulted. And the police like she she even made an accusation against the assailants. And the police were not interested in pursuing it because she's a migrant worker.
Phil Robertson 39:00
That's exactly right. I mean, she was a migrant worker who came with her husband was a robber Tapper. You know, they were, her husband was shot and killed and she was raped by two time men. In the robber field in the middle of the night. The police came, took away the body of her husband, you know, collected evidence, including used condoms and semen in them. Were supposed to send these for DNA testing to identify the perpetrators that never happened, you know, later took her to look at some photos. But you know, it was at night, you know, these guys were wearing balaclavas. They were basically had their faces covered. You know, so she didn't see the faces of the perpetrators so she wasn't able to identify them. And the bottom line was that there was no justice done. Essentially. Your husband died. She was raped. And she finally went back as a widow to to Myanmar. You know, I mean, it was It was horrific. It was a very clear failure of basic justice here. And that was even with the involvement of a Thai NGO, representing her and dealing with the police, you know, the police just didn't care. They just didn't do anything.
Brad 40:19
I mean, that's that there's a, there's a quote here. Within the report, when the migrant who is arrested talks to the police, he needs to keep his head down when talking because if a migrant looks at the police's face, while talking, the police will hit him
Phil Robertson 40:35
that is consistent and constant across the country.
Brad 40:39
It this is a bit, I don't even know how to quite put this into words, it's this is beyond just what we what we normally hear about this is well into the realm of sort of more more classic racism and classism of, of just this underclass that you can use to vent your frustrations on as you see fit. Who do not fundamentally have have humanity in the eyes of the law. The it's just difficult to imagine that in a country like Thailand, that that is trying to be, you know, a relatively, you know, high level of development, you know, tries to have a high, you know, HDI within within the region. It's trying to be, you know, tech leader and all these sorts of things. You have this depth of, I don't even know how you would describe this phenomenon. This is
Phil Robertson 41:43
it's a dark, it's a dark underside of the Thai economy. It's it's the, the hidden exploitation, that runs through much of the economy that, you know, you're talking four to 5 million migrant workers experience on a day to day basis, the same thing, I will say the same thing happens to the Cambodian migrants. The same thing happens to allow migrants when they're discovered, because allow, tend to hide in plain sight there because they speak they speak Thai very well, men can basically often pass his tie. The and it happens now in the Vietnamese, I mean, so we have, we have Vietnamese migrant workers that are coming into like the northeast of Thailand, and also facing exploitation. There's a reason why, for instance, if you're an immigration officer, the number one destination where all the immigration officers want to get to, is Mesa, because the takings are so rich, from from extortion from migrant workers and from employers. And, you know, what you have in not only in the police system, but also in the immigration police system is that people will pay money to get positions in certain places, you know, there is a pay to play promotion process that runs throughout the police also in the immigration service. And this is because, you know, so people are taking bribes in some cases, they may have paid, you know, millions of baht in order to get a position in Mossad and they need them to immediately start recouping the money that they paid out to get the position. And, you know, it is it is it is a very, very cool, controlling process where, you know, these people are there to enrich themselves at the best of what are based on on the heads of the migrant workers who are some of the poorest people in the Thai economy.
Brad 43:45
I mean, the irony is what you're describing the, the mentality of the Thai, police and labor and so on. It reminds me very much of, of the stories that I hear from Myanmar proper, like, you know, we've been covering Myanmar here on this podcast, we've been covering the coup for three years. And this is just one of those consistent themes of of policing and military of like, well, yeah, but you go to the places where you can live out your power fantasy, that's, that's your thing. The
Phil Robertson 44:18
relationship to of the Thai police to the migrant workers is predatory. They're, they're predators. And they are seen as that by the migrant workers. I mean, even in cases for instance. So Thailand has an education for all policy that allows migrant children to go to school. In that is a good thing. But we've seen prisons in places in some Otakon where, you know, the police will will follow the school children who are dressed as high school children, although they're migrant children, and they follow them back Have their houses in order to arrest the parents.
Brad 45:05
But on what grounds that
Phil Robertson 45:07
they're illegal, they're undocumented, even if they're, even if they aren't documented doesn't matter, they'll just make something up. You don't have to have grounds to arrest and extort a migrant worker, you can just show up, the fact that you have your uniform is enough. No one's gonna stand up for migrant workers. That's their that's their assumption. And that's why, for instance, when when those two guys ran away, when when the US embassy official stood up and start questioning them, you know, that's why the migrant workers were so delighted because they'd never seen it before.
Brad 45:42
It's, it's difficult for, for me anyway, you know, you're living in a Western country, just to imagine the concept of they're not being habeas corpus. They're not being due process. They're not being, you know, a right to be heard and equal evaluation before the law. It's it's such a perverse notion, because you always feel in the back of your head, but there's someone that I can appeal to there is a government, there is a police force, there is a government agency whose job it is to protect me. And they've got nothing. Those people are the ones preying on them. Yeah, I says.
Phil Robertson 46:20
You mean, this is this is the sort of thing where we've, we've continued to see issues and problems. So I'll give you another case. There was a case of a mon woman who was a maid, she was actually being hired and employed by a Thai Army family in Lopburi. She was accused of the matriarch of stealing jewelry, I have no idea whether she did or not, may have case, she was beaten in this family compound, basically beaten senseless. And then they pour gasoline over her and lit her on fire. You know, second and third degree burns all over her body. She didn't die at that time, she was then thrown into a room. You know, without any treatment for her wounds for several days. Finally, they decided that, you know, yeah, she probably will die. So they threw it in the back of a pickup truck, drove her across the provincial line and dumped her by the side of the road. Amazingly, she was still alive for all this. She was able to. She was good Samaritans picked her up. And there are certainly a lot of good Samaritans in Thailand, who helped people, particularly poor ties, will will have will have will help people out. But then he was taken to a hospital, she lived for another day or two, until she, she was able to be interviewed and was able to sort of identify what had happened, and who would done this to her. And then there was like a 10 year process that the exile trade union federation of Burma engaged with, to find other witnesses and finally assemble a court case. And, you know, as a result, the patriarch, and some of the others finally did go to prison. But it was like a 15 year process with multiple engagements by various different external groups. And it was such a shocking, violent crime. That, you know, it never went away. But but, you know, the Thai government was trying to sweep that all under the rug. I mean, this was the whole thing. You know, this was the whole issue that, you know, there is impunity to abuse, and they try to cover these things up. And they, you know, and play for time, you hope that the migrant worker who has got a grievance will finally recognize they're not going to get a justice, just like the woman whose husband whose husband was killed, and she was raped, that she finally couldn't hang on anymore. She said, I need to get on with my life. And they're not going to do anything on this. So I might as well finally go back to Myanmar. And that's what she did. And, you know, as a result of the two men that killed her husband and raped her and stole their things, you know, we're never brought to justice. You know, this is this is the reality here. And unless Thailand recognizes that there has to be a migrant registration system that allows for portability of status that allow people to change employers and get away from abuse of an employer that allows people to have rights and be recognized like other workers, tie workers and actually implements the promises that that tie labor laws apply to all persons who are legally in the country to work, unless there are amendments made to the Labor Relations Act of 1975 that do away with the rights abusing the provisions that restrict the right to form unions and the right to lead unions to people We only have Thai nationality, which is a, which is a restriction that has been completely condemned by the International Labor Organization others and this is discriminatory and abusive and needs to change, unless some of these things happen. And, you know, migrant workers can represent themselves and can form unions and stand up on their own and, and protect themselves, this system of impunity will continue, and migrant workers will continue to suffer in silence.
Brad 50:28
Because it feels though, when you're talking about we have to have a registry, we have to have this we have to have that. It, it just feels to me. Like, but would that would that make a difference because a law only functionally exists. If there is power behind it, it's, you know, the entire premise of the state of the legal system of everything that holds the operations of a country together, is the implicit threat of force, if things are not done in the legislatively appropriate way. And if you don't have that implicit threat of force, then all of the legislature all of the, you know, organizations, all of the fancy courthouses don't mean anything. And it seems like there is no one willing in Thailand, especially not among the police, who ultimately would have to enforce these laws, there is no one willing to actually enforce changes to the system. Is there like an undercurrent within the police force? No.
Phil Robertson 51:30
I mean, I think what we I mean, what we're looking for, I mean, obviously, we're looking for changes in the law. And we're looking at the you tie Free Trade Agreement, and the need to revamp the law of particular labor laws, to do away with some of these rights abuses and provisions. You know, so I think if we get the framework, right, then we have a system where you can get prominent test cases where, you know, something happens, we have NGOs in place, we have the media in place, we have others who are prepared to, you know, show that accountability is possible, and there has to be a demonstration effect, there has to be something that breaks the silence, that breaks the sort of veil of impunity that has continued here. And, you know, there needs to be more cases like that, for instance, the Burmese made were burned to death who, ultimately people did go to prison, there has to be more of those kinds of cases. There are some cases that stand out, there are two cases where the system works, but they're few and far between. And what we need to do is we need to basically improve the legal and regulatory frameworks and build a better understanding so that ultimately, we get to a point where we're able to have demonstrated successes through various campaigning by NGOs and others, by trade unions, to, you know, affect justice is not going to happen just because somebody said there's rule of law in Thailand. I mean, the Thai system is very deeply entrenched. But what you do is you have to chip away at it, you have to create doubt, in the back of the minds of the police and the immigration in the employers that if I do this, I might be held accountable, I might have a problem. This might be publicized, you know, the things I'm sending to North America or Europe might be sanctioned, because of supply chain violations. These are the sorts of things you have to you have to you have to raise the bar, you have to raise the doubts. You have to basically, you know, sort of fill in the patchwork by campaigning, that's the only way we can get there. But I tell you, if in fact, the Labor Relations Act was amended, and migrant workers could legally form unions, I expect we'd see a massive burst of migrant worker union organizing here, similar to what we saw in 1975, when that labor law first allowed ties to organize, but then also, for instance, like the labor union organizing that happened after Suharto fell in Indonesia in 1998. And other times where labor rights have been long suppressed, but then are suddenly allowed. And I think that the you know, the labor organizing amongst migrant workers could take Thailand by storm.
Brad 54:13
And I think I agree like labor labor unions are something that people don't give enough respect to, they don't recognize just how powerful and effective they can be when they're when they're well done. But turning to the international you, you have spoken about this idea a few times now, of going through the supply chain, and seeing whether you have a European or North American or something like that supplier or distributor or what have you, who is willing to sanction or is willing to cease collaboration over these abuses. Have you seen that? put into practice. Have you have you had any success or do you know of NGOs that have had success trying to get the European North American Australia In whatever companies to actually take action, because a lot of the time it feels as though these companies want to say that they're doing something I think a very famous case is the gap in the United States like they, they've come under fire at least three separate times for for children working in sweatshops. And they keep making statements. And they keep saying they're going to reform and then they come under fire again, for doing the same thing again, do they actually put the sanctions on? Or is it more just performative in the West and the Thai side doesn't really pay much mind?
Phil Robertson 55:31
Well, I think there's a couple of parts of this. I mean, it's not just all about companies, although there are cases where companies are, have been held accountable and had to pay significant fines and other things like that. There are I mean, but these cases are very labor intensive, and you need to have any labor unions, you need to have NGOs, you have to have various media and other people like putting pressure. The other part of it is, though, that there's now requirements, for instance, in the United States that you can't bring products that have been been produced with bonded or forced labor. And so that has been used by the Customs and Border Patrol, to bar, for instance, rubber gloves from Malaysia that were sent to the United States, and were produced by migrant workers facing horrible exploitation and debt bondage and other things, you know, people from South Asia who, in factories in Malaysia, so there is, you know, a greater attention going on in the European Union has just passed a supply chain regulatory mechanism that is going to require European companies to do much more on their supply chain. So there's a broad trend moving in the correct direction. There's also an ongoing discussion. For instance, at the UN General Assembly, there's a drafting committee looking at it binding human rights convention that would deal with business and human rights that would basically take the next step beyond the guidelines, un guidelines on business and human rights, which are still voluntary and not not up to the task, frankly, we'd have a binding international human rights convention, that would basically say that, you know, businesses have to respect human rights, they can't get away with rights abusing behavior. So these things are there's there's a broad trend line going on. I mean, you know, we cannot allow cynicism, to rule the day, we cannot allow impunity to continue unchecked. But there's a lot of hard work to get at this. I mean, there's there's a lot of campaigning, there's a lot of investigative and research that needs to be done. There's a lot of educating people, particularly the media and others about the importance of this. And, you know, ultimately talking with the Burmese people, and the Cambodians and the LAO, who, you know, have faced exploitation so that they, in fact, understand what their rights are. And that when they come to Thailand, they know how to stand up for their rights.
Brad 58:04
And is there anything I'm wondering because most of our audience have are based in Western countries and have Western backgrounds? Why we do everything in English? Is there anything that individuals in the West can be doing or should be doing to try and ameliorate this problem, or at the very least, to not unwittingly participate in it?
Phil Robertson 58:24
Well, I think the important part is demanding their governments to take up the issue of human rights in Thailand, and particularly labor law reform. I mean, that's really critical. You know, we have to get to a place where migrant workers are able to protect themselves. You know, there's not enough Thai NGOs to do it. There's not enough media, people who are interested, we need to have migrant workers empowered legally, to defend them defend themselves and defend their rights. So you know, if there's one thing I would say it's like, you know, people in the European Union need to be demanding that the European Union, lay down some clear markers that, you know, there has to be labor law reform, there has to be human rights reforms in Thailand, if they expect to do business with the European Union through a free trade agreement. There's no, it's not it's not possible to serve just look the other way anymore, you know.
Brad 59:23
And I'm just looking at the report, the key recommendations you have at the bottom. They all make sense to establish a special commission revoked the provincial decrees restricting restricting microworkers rights in specific provinces take the necessary measures to end torture and ill treatment and amend the Labor Relations Act of 1975. These all make sense. I'm wondering, what what is the plan for for these recommendations going forward? Is Human Rights Watch in a position to actually advocate for these types of changes? Do
Phil Robertson 59:58
we continue to campaign for these. Okay, so you do that as we do continue to campaign for these. But I mean, we're concerned, frankly, also that, you know, the new government of Prime Minister said that Tommy Singh, is now right now looking at scrapping the labor rights reforms and the IUU fishing reforms that are connected to the fishing sector. So this government, this Thai Government is going in exactly the wrong direction. You know, they're bending over backwards for foreign investors, they're saying that we want to, you know, revitalize the seafood sector, when, in fact, the Thai seafood sector was was was based on slavery, you know, their, their good old days that, you know, some of these fishermen and their their champions in the government talk about were, in fact, ones that were exposed by the New York Times and The Guardian and AAP as some of the worst rights abuses you can imagine where people were at sea for 10 years, 17 years facing brutal beatings, being killed and thrown overboard. I mean, you name it, you know, the, when you want to talk about impunity, the Thai fishing industry is the epitome of it. And for somehow, the government to think that giving these guys a break, is somehow going to improve Thai, Thailand's image in Thailand's economy is a fundamental misreading of the lessons of history when dealing with migrant workers here, but, you know, I mean, you know, Prime Minister set that doesn't get it, you know, I mean, this is a real estate guy, he thinks that everybody is, you know, exactly how they present themselves. I mean, the the naivete is shocking. And, you know, the, the fishing sector, which has given a lot of campaign contributions to various different political parties, is trying to maximize their leverage and trying to rollback all the things that were the culmination of this process with the European Union, connected to the yellow card for the fishing industry. So you know, I mean, it's unclear whether the Thai government has learned any lessons here. In fact, it seems, you know, that even when something happens, that shocks the system and causes them to react that, oh, we have to do better than this. But then after a period of time, then it will reset back into the same exploitative model. And so we have to break the model. And that means that there has to be labor and regulatory reforms, there has to be potential sanctions on goods that are produced with forced labor and abuse of labor. And, you know, the the trading partners of Thailand have to get tough with Bangkok.
Brad 1:02:37
Absolutely, I'm just wondering, as a as a final examination on this, your, your report notes that there are specific provinces that have, in addition to all of these problems, specific legislation, in effect, that further restrict the rights of the migrant workers.
Phil Robertson 1:02:54
These are the curfews, some of those curfews rescinded, some of those curfew still remain on the books. You know, basically, a lot of these regulations for these rights abusing regulations, once they once they're brought in, can be selectively enforced. Even if in for instance, after a period of time, they've sort of passed from regular usage, it's like something that, you know, the police can pull off the bookshelf and use anytime they want. And that, you know, the furtherance of impunity, I mean, migrant workers have no idea, like, what are the actual rules and regulations, if, as far as they're concerned, it's just basically whenever the police say, and their their whole intent, when they're captured by the police is, what am I going to have to pay to get free and get away from these guys, because if I don't get free, and I don't get away, and I get sucked further into the system, it becomes more expensive, becomes more abusive. And you know, I might not survive.
Brad 1:03:58
I mean, this is this has been a very, sort of shocking insight into into a very, very, very dark reality in the dark industry. And it sort of highlights, I think, in a very depressing way, how low people can sink when you give them impunity, and when you let them exploit and abuse an entire population at will. So So I strongly urge all of our listeners to read the Human Rights Watch report, and to feel any of their eyes themselves with what is going on. And and I thank you very much for the work that you're you and your organization are doing. And I thank you very much for the time that you've given us coming in and discussing all of this.
Phil Robertson 1:04:42
Well, I think that it's important for people to understand that the sorts of things we've been talking about are what are those people in Myanmar who are fleeing that conscription? The young people, you know, the people from 18 to 35 year old but they're male and 18 to 27 years old, they're female. These are the things that when they flee to Thailand are going to face. So you know, people talk about Myanmar and talk about the system, as, you know, being so abusive and retribution, which it certainly is. But the other side of the coin is that when they come to Thailand, they also face horrific abuses. And, you know, I would hope that there would be an effort to somehow impress upon the ties, and eventually there's going to be peace, and eventually there's going to be a retrospective democratic government and the Myanmar and the people who run that government are going to be looking at how Thailand treated them in their compatriots during their hard times. And I think that, you know, unless Thailand takes some corrective action, I think time Myanmar relations are going to suffer in the future because of these kinds of abuses against ordinary people.
Host 1:06:07
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