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| On our way to the migrant worker factories in Maha Chai |
February 7, 2012 our Globalization class embarked on our first
field trip to Maha Chai – about an hour outside of Bangkok. We met with the Labour Rights Promotion
Network Foundation who briefed us on the situation of migrant workers in
Thailand. During the day, we got to
visit the shrimp farms where migrant workers spend 10 hours a day shelling
shrimp, we got to speak with Myanmar migrant workers, and visit their village
and market place where they live. We
even had a run-in with a Thai “Mafia-broker” who called his supporters to come
out and shoo us away from the village because he was told we were students and
afraid we ‘knew too much.’
Due to the geographic location of Thailand, its temperate climate,
and cheap living conditions, and constant demand for labor and sex workers,
Thailand is a source, transit, and destination country for human
trafficking. I was aware of the trickery
that took place just across Thailand’s border with neighboring country Myanmar,
where men, women and teenagers are coerced into relocating to Thailand for
promises of better living conditions and higher wages only to discover
themselves in some of the worst conditions and human rights violations in the
world today. Once they comply (or in
many cases – do not comply) they are trafficked across the border and
forced to work in labor camps or sex work with extremely harsh life-threatening
conditions.
While I have read several statistics and articles on various
stomach-churning conditions and mistreatments, nothing prepared me for
today. One statistic that stuck with me
particularly was the number 4,000. By
the time the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN) saved two Myanmar
women who were trafficked into the sex trade, they had been working for two
years, each having to have ‘seen’ over 4,000 clients. That is roughly 2,000 clients per year or
perhaps more strongly stated that is 5.48
men a day. While the details of the treatments of the
workers that the leader of the LPN were saying were nothing new to me…it was
new to several of my classmates, and one in particular.
At one point, the lecturer was discussing the methods and tactics
that brokers or labor wardens used to keep their workers bound to their
labor. Their workers were not allowed to
leave the establishment, they were confined to small rooms, they had limited
food supply…etc. He described how when
workers were sick – they were never sent to the hospitals for treatment because
that was too expensive and simply replacing laborers was cheaper. He then also stated how women who were
pregnant were forced to undergo abortions…by a broomstick.
All of a sudden, my classmate and close friend Ei Ei began to
shake. I couldn’t see her face because I
was sitting behind her, but I started to hear soft sobs. Although I had no idea what happened, I
quickly grabbed my Pooh bear Disney tissues from my purse and took her
outside. Once she calmed down a bit, I asked if she was ok, and what had happened.
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| Ei Ei with her new friends on our field trip - Myanmar shrimp farm migrant workers |
Ei Ei has worked with NGOs in Myanmar for several years and is a
very established professional in her field of environmental preservation for
the Myanmar people. She has seen incredible
hardship in her country, is a proud Myanmar citizen and is an unbelievably
strong woman. But, as she explained to
me, this was the first time she was learning about the horrible conditions of
her people who were brought across the Thai border, and it made her sick. She was so upset to hear, she became
extremely emotional.
I sat there for a second, like a deer in headlights, unable to
process what had just happened. I began
to justify her reaction by “oh well it’s the first time she has heard about
this” or “wow she took this all really personally…”
Then, I realized I had been justifying my reactions to these
stories. I figured I was emotionally
“OK” with what was being said – because I had heard it before. But that does not make it ok, and it does
not make the 10,000th case any less important than the
first. Thailand has (unsuccessfully)
battled human trafficking and the mistreatment of migrant workers for over thirty
years. Billions of dollars with
countless government and civil society efforts have been thrown into the region
in hopes of making a difference. While
there has been progress, there is much to be done. And just because it has been covered in the news
or exposed to the world – does not mean the fight for humane treatment is
over.
Ei Ei continued, gasping out a rhetorical question about many people
from her village who had gone off to Thailand in search of a better future and
she wondered what happened to them, as the statistics were grim against the
hope of a positive outcome. She asked,
what she, as an educated Myanmar native, was supposed to do to help them – and
how she could help them. As Ei Ei
hunched over on the bench softly sobbing overwhelmed, I realized that perhaps I
had tried too hard to distance myself from the realities of human trafficking,
human rights violations and the situation here in Thailand with these migrant
workers. And I needed to be more upset – like Ei Ei.
As she composed herself, she tearfully out loud thanked our
program for bringing her here to learn about these workers, their situations
and their needs and promised that she would do everything she could to help
them. In that moment – I thanked the
program for bringing me Ei Ei – who forced upon me a reality that no statistic,
lecturer or documentary could while demonstrating tremendous strength, passion and courage
that was insurmountable.
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