Sometimes, wars are not fought with guns and tanks but with nets and hooks. For those enslaved by the Thai fishing industry, the ocean is their battlefield; every man is at war with the sea and their slavers. Beatings and killings are an everyday occurrence. Forced to silently bear unrelenting abuse, countless Myanmar migrants and impoverished Thai boys step onto the planks of ships as young men brimming with hope and walk off as old men bruised from decades of slavery. Those are the lucky ones—the less fortunate walk off the planks as ghosts, wandering the deep blue for eternity.
Slavery is often thought of as a practice of the past, not the present. But slavery is very much a present reality for many who traverse the waters of Southeast Asia.
The Thai fishing industry is estimated to bring 7 billion dollars in profit to Thailand annually and has deep political and economic roots. During 2014 and 2015, public outrage ensued as the industry’s involvement in human trafficking and forced labor received attention from Greenpeace and the media. Soon after, the American State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report dropped Thailand’s ranking on its list of countries ranked according to their compliance with “minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking” to the “Tier 3 Watch List,” where it joined other countries in which human trafficking was deemed rampant and reform efforts insufficient. This development caught the attention of Thai officials who were concerned that the multi-billion-dollar fishing industry would be negatively impacted, prompting a recent series of reforms since 2016 designed to address illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
What Keeps Slavery Aboard Thai Fishing Ships Afloat?
The widespread labor exploitation in the Thai fishing industry stems largely from three causes: Political turbulence, economic pressure to maintain a profitable enterprise, and the vulnerability of certain populations.
Factors 1 and 2: Political Turbulence and a National Economic Stake
First, the turbulence of the political climate in Thailand and the economic pressure to ensure the profitability of the fishing industry are cogenerative factors.
The bulk of the cost of the fishing industry lies in labor. To keep private profits high and boost the overall economy of Thailand, there is an immense incentive to minimize labor costs. Thai officials who understand the stake of the fishing industry in the Thai economy turn a blind eye to the blatant violation of regulations by fishing magnates, concerned that the industry will stop turning profits for an important sector of the economy. Corrupt authorities looking to pad their wallets are even more content to leave the fishing industry to its own devices.
The weak rule of law and political instability in Thailand greatly magnify the problem. Upright officials are discouraged from cracking down on the fishing industry for the sake of maintaining the stability of the Thai economy. Also, due to the absence of accountability measures, authorities accept bribes in exchange to turning a blind eye to blatant human rights violations with ease. Thus, despite the efforts to reform management and enforcement of regulations, inconsistent implementation of the law results as police and authorities are bought off by fishing companies. The Environmental Justice Foundation’s most recent report finds that illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing policies have largely flopped due to arbitrary implementation and enforcement.
Factor 3: Vulnerable populations
Cross-border migration and transnational human trafficking are inextricably related to slavery on Thai ships. The vast majority of those enslaved by the fishing sector are undocumented immigrants from Myanmar and Cambodia. The economic vulnerability of recently displaced and diasporic populations makes them particularly susceptible to deceptive offers of employment. The disorientation of a rapid change in surroundings and housing instability that often results from cross-border migration also make these populations susceptible to kidnappings and other human trafficking crimes. Particularly in light of recent tragedies such as the Rohingya ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, Thailand has seen a massive influx of populations vulnerable to exploitation by the fishing industry.
Currently, a lack of legal distinction between human trafficking and forced labor makes the administration of justice difficult. Forced labor is treated legally as a subset of human trafficking—any form of documented consent, including labor contracts signed under coercion or after kidnapping, disqualifies an individual from seeking redress through legal means. This means that even after escaping slavery, fishermen find themselves trapped in vicious cycles of poverty and human trafficking as they are often left penniless and without a possibility of pressing charges.
Transshipment Vessels: Floating Jails in Unmonitored Waters
In addition to the political, social, and economic conditions that are conducive to maintaining exploitative labor in on Thai fishing ships, this industry has developed some strategies of its own to escape regulation. One core mechanism by which fishing industries prevent escapees and keep forced labor operations airtight is the use of transshipment vessels. These vessels remain perpetually at sea, with secondary vessels transporting the fishing yield from the boat to port and bringing supplies to the transshipment boats. Imprisoned on transshipment vessels, countless men are enslaved and stranded at sea, with no means of communication and no way to escape.
To address slavery aboard fishing vessels, changes in licensing requirements and monitoring have been made. This includes the establishment of a “port in/port out” system in which boats must “check-in” and “check-out” before docking at or leaving ports. But reports from Greenpeace reveal that rogue fishing vessels have only shifted their operations to more distant waters.
A recent six-month ban on transshipment vessels has been touted by officials as one of the watershed components of recent reforms. Yet, it is disturbing to note that short timeframe of the ban and the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms. Following the ban, transshipment vessels have been shifted to unmonitored waters to avoid the coast guard. Enforcement at the ports is even less effective: boats travelling in and out of ports are only secondary vessels to bring catches to shore, effectively skirting reforms.
These transshipment vessels are almost spectral in nature—how is an official to catch a boat that never docks?
How to Sink a Saltwater Empire
It is clear that top-down reforms of the fishing industry are hard-pressed to yield results—political turbulence and economic dependence enable corruption and inconsistent implementation that will continuously undermine efforts.
But what about reforms designed to minimize the vulnerability of populations currently targeted by the Thai fishing industry? A focus on migrant workers and their rights as well as the construction of a legal framework of reform for human rights abuses by the fishing sector could potentially decrease the vulnerability of populations preyed upon by the fishing industry. Potential solutions could take the form of more comprehensive legal rights granted to undocumented immigrants and a framework established for legal recompense of human rights violations committed against those lacking legal status and victims of trafficking.
Alongside this approach, environmental regulations limiting the fishing yield in Thai waters could work to decrease economic incentives for slave labor, thus simultaneously addressing Factor One (political turbulence) and Factor Two (an economic stake). Exploitative labor practices arise as a result of too many boats and insufficient fish, conditions which encourage cutting labor costs to boost profits. Therefore, environmental regulations which set a yield quota or limit vessels deployed can disincentivize the use of cheap or exploitative labor by decreasing the amount of boats in use. In the long-run, this solution may also diminish powerful vested interests that benefit economically from the fishing sector.
It is, of course, much more difficult to implement than to theorize reform. Proposed policies have continuously been watered-down, and transshipment vessels pose another, more slippery problem: These floating ghost cities haunt increasingly distant, unmonitored waters. How do you sink an empire you cannot find?
Human rights violations within the fishing industry and exploitative labor practices are complex issues which dip into a slew of other problems plaguing Thailand and Southeast Asia that no single reform agenda can effectively address. However, piecemeal reform with a comprehensive focus could potentially go a long way towards undermining the violent power dynamics at play which allow for the continuous exploitation of marginalized peoples by slavers and the fishing sector in Thailand.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Maliz Ong