Thailand defended its efforts to stop human trafficking yesterday after the just-released 2017 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report by the United States kept the country on a trafficking watch list. Thai officials urged U.S. officials to visit the country and see first-hand its efforts.
Thailand is a regional center for migrant workers who come from poorer, neighboring countries including Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia in search of jobs. Exploitation of these workers is a major source of the country’s human trafficking issues.
Rights groups say millions are vulnerable to abuse, including forced labor, in various Thai sectors including the country’s multi-billion dollar seafood industry.
The U.S. State Department’s annual TIP report said Thailand reported more investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of trafficking cases but it did not demonstrate “increasing efforts compared to the previous reporting period,” reported Reuters.
It added that Thailand did not “convict officials complicit in trafficking crimes, and official complicity continued to impede anti-trafficking efforts.”
“What I want to see is perhaps more cooperation from the U.S. and for them to come to study what we have done so far,” government spokesman Weerachon Sukondhapatipak told Reuters on Wednesday.
“Maybe they will see our progress differently,” he said.
Earlier in the year, Thailand said it hoped to be upgraded from the Tier 2 watch list of nations not meeting minimum standards to end human trafficking to simply Tier 2, the last step before Tier 1, which are nations that are found to meet U.S. minimum standards.
In 2016, the United States removed Thailand from its list of worst human trafficking offenders, known as Tier 3, following efforts by the military government to fight trafficking in response to international criticism, including through reform of its anti-trafficking laws.
However, Thailand stayed on the Tier 2 watch list for the second year in a row for 2017.
In 2015, Southeast Asia saw more than 4,000 migrants land on the shores of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Bangladesh following a Thai crackdown on people-smuggling gangs.
Some of those arrested in the crackdown are on trial in Bangkok in what has been called the largest human trafficking trial in Thai history. A verdict is expected next month but rights groups say the arrests were just the tip of an extensive smuggling and trafficking network.
Thailand is Washington’s oldest ally in the region, but ties were strained by a 2014 military coup that ousted an elected civilian government.
Since the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, however, relations between the two nations appear to have improved, with Trump inviting Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to visit the White House, which he will do next month.
The 2017 TIP report placed China on Tier 3, the level for the worst human trafficking offenders. Myanmar was upgraded this year from that list to the Tier 2 Watch List, which puts it on par with Thailand, reported Bangkok Post.
Malaysia moved up to Tier 2 from the Tier 2 watch list this year, finding its place on the list of countries recognized for making strong efforts to stop human trafficking.
