Dozens of labor and human-rights groups have condemned a plan by the Thai junta to use prison labor on fishing boats, which are already notorious for violence, human trafficking and slavelike conditions, Time reports.
The coalition of 45 international organizations has penned
an open letter to Thai army chief Prayut Chan-ocha, who has run the Southeast
Asian nation since staging a coup d’état on May 22, urging him to end a pilot
project that sends prisoners out to sea.
Much of the fish, shrimp and shellfish caught ends up on
dinner tables in the US and Europe.
“Thailand cannot run from the trafficking problem in its fishing
fleet,” said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labour
Rights Forum, one of the signatories.
“And sending prisoners to sea will not address the
systematic, pervasive labour problems in Thailand’s fishing industry.”
Currently, migrant workers from Burma (officially known as
Myanmar) and Cambodia comprise the bulk of workers on Thai fishing vessels.
Systemic abuses have been widely documented with many
workers receiving little or no pay, getting traded from boat to boat so they
never see land for years, and, in the very worst cases, simply tossed into the
sea when they inevitably fall ill.
“Thailand has repeatedly said that it’s committed to end forced
labor and human trafficking, but this pilot project heads in precisely the
opposite direction and will make things worse,” said Phil Robertson, deputy
Asia director of Human Rights Watch, who also said the initiative “should be
immediately scrapped.”
Read the article HERE.
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