Labor activists mourned the death of 54 Burmese illegal migrants on April 9 and petitioned the Thai government on Tuesday to make sweeping changes to labor and immigration laws. Meanwhile, the government said the deaths would be prosecuted under smuggling laws rather than human trafficking laws.
Adisorn Kerdmongkol of the International Rescue Committee told The Irrawaddy that Minister of Justice Sompong Amornwiwat accepted a list of recommendations from activist groups.
“The minister responded that he agreed the survivors should be protected as witnesses during the investigation, but the problem is it would be against immigration regulations,” Adisorn said.
The group’s main recommendations called for the government to investigate the 54 deaths in detail with transparency and to improve the migrant worker situation in Thailand through changes to various regulations and labor and immigration laws.
The 54 deaths occurred when 54 Burmese migrants entered the country illegally and suffocated in a seafood container truck in Ranong Province while they were being smuggled to Phuket and Phang Nga. The deaths occurred in Suksamran District near Kawthoung, Burma. Sixty-seven migrants survived the ordeal.
The recommendations included a petition from Hong Kong-based Asian Network for the Rights of Occupational Accident Victims (ANROAV) and 80 international rights organizations and individual activists that strongly criticized the government’s immigration and labor policies.
Immigration bureau chief Pol Lt-Gen Chatchawal Suksomjit said on Monday that an initial investigation had determined the evidence in the case did not support a human trafficking charge but rather the case would be handled as one of human smuggling.
"This initial finding may run counter to general sentiment and reports which labeled this as a case of human trafficking. But there is a difference between human smuggling and trafficking, it's a matter of degree," said Pol Lt-Gen Chatchawal, according to a report in the Bangkok Post on Tuesday.
Under Thai law, human trafficking requires an act of exploitation, which was absent from the case of the 54 migrants who died while seeking proper work. Human trafficking must involve smuggling of people with the specific objective of employing them in slave-like conditions and jobs. People smuggling is a crime of lesser degree and the penalties are less severe.
In addition, Supat Gukun, the director of the Bureau of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Labour, said the case will be raised during the Asean labor ministers meeting in Thailand in early May during a panel discussion on the mobilization of migrant workers in Asean countries
Adisorn said Asean countries should work at the regional level to solve the problem of migrant labor abuses and find ways to lessen exploitation and injustice.
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