BD victims of Thai trafficking face uncertain future

FE Team | Published: October 19, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: October 18, 2014 22:43:18

For at least five years, the Andaman coast of Thailand has been the scene of some horrific abuses, mainly against ethnic Rohingyas, a Muslim minority group fleeing persecution in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
In 2009, the Thai Navy was found to be towing boats packed with Rohingyas out to sea, and leaving them to drift. Hundreds are believed to have died.
More recently Thai police and military personnel have been accused of selling Rohingyas who washed up on Thailand's shores to human traffickers.
These abuses are in part what caused Thailand to be downgraded to the lowest rank in the annual US report on human trafficking.
Successive Thai governments have promised to stamp out this scourge.
But the recent discovery of 171, mainly Bangladeshi men being held captive in jungle camps, shows how much still needs to be done,
Eighty-one of the men are now being sheltered in a local government hall in the town of Takua Pa. They sit there listlessly, some nursing ugly wounds inflicted by their captors, reports BBC.
Ayub was working as an agricultural labourer in Chittagong, southeast Bangladesh, but he said the work ran out. A man suggested he go to Cox's Bazar. There he suddenly found himself being grabbed, tied up and forced onto a boat which he said was already crowded with people.
He repeatedly asked where they were taking him, but said the guards threatened to kill him if he did not shut up. He, too, has three children.
That they were rescued from their captors is due to the determination of local district chief, Manit Pianthiong. A 28-year veteran of the area, who got the chief's job nine months ago, he is all too familiar with the human trafficking which goes on along the indented coastline of Takua Pa. Mr Pianthiong says he is trying to curb all forms of smuggling, but he is focussing in particular on the human trade, which he says is damaging the image of the entire country.
He encourages people in fishing communities along the coast to alert him to any signs of large groups of people being held. That is how he heard about these three groups of mainly Bangladeshi men, and a few Rohingyas.
The first group of 37 was found last month. Then, on 11 October, his men tracked down another group of 53.
The last group, of 81, was surrounded in a forest camp near the road on 13 October. They had been driven by their guards from one camp to another in an attempt to evade the authorities. Mr Pianthiong believes many more were not rescued, and may have been sold.
However, the police want then to be jailed as illegal immigrants.
It is difficult to know why they want this outcome, for people who have all the appearance of victims.
Perhaps it is to avoid having to admit that trafficking continues in Thailand. Perhaps it is because they are reluctant to go after the trafficking kingpins.