Obama Revives Anti-Slavery Law To Target Thailand's Seafood Exports

[Coss]

Legal loophole on importation of goods produced by children or slaves to be closed after Guardian helped expose use of forced labour to crew boats

 

 

 

The Thai-owned Silver Sea 2 refrigerated cargo ship was seized by Indonesian authorities after being caught taking suspected slave-caught fish aboard.

 

Seafood produced by slaves in Thailand will be among goods banned from sale in the US as Barack Obama revives laws targeting industries that use forced and child labour.

 

Federal officials are preparing to enforce an 86-year-old ban on importing goods made by children or slaves under new provisions of a law signed by the president.

 

“This law slams shut an unconscionable and archaic loophole that forced America to accept products made by children or slave labour,†said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who worked on the legislation.

 

The Tariff Act of 1930, which gave Customs and Border Protection the authority to seize shipments where forced labour was suspected and block further imports, was last used in 2000, and has been used only 39 times in all, largely because of two words: “consumptive demand†– if there was not sufficient supply to meet domestic demand, imports were allowed regardless of how they were produced.

 

The Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act signed by Obama on Wednesday eliminated that language, allowing stiffer enforcement.

 

Fish and shrimp from Thailand, peanuts from Turkey, gold from Ghana and carpets from India are featured on a US Labor Department list of more than 350 goods produced by child labour or forced labour.

 

Reporting by the Guardian, Associated Press, New York Times and others has continued to highlight inhumane working conditions in the Thai seafood sector and the US legal loophole that allowed continued imports.

 

As a result of reports about workers being trapped and enslaved by Thai companies, thousands of slaves have been rescued, traffickers arrested and millions of dollars’ worth of seafood and vessels seized.

 

“If the US government works to really keep out goods made with forced labour, this change will have a profound ripple effect on supply chains worldwide,†said David Abramowitz, who advocated for the change as vice-president for Humanity United.

 

To start an investigation, customs needs to receive a petition from anyone — a business, an agency, even a non-citizen — showing “reasonably but not conclusively†that imports were made at least in part with forced labour.

 

Neha Misra of the Solidarity Center, another nonprofit that worked for the legal change, said petitions remained hard to file and proving a case was complicated but she was still encouraged. “Before US law said that we would tolerate forced labour if we really wanted a product for domestic consumption. Now we are saying that we will not tolerate forced labour for any reason. This is a major step forward.

 

Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman for National Fisheries Institute, which represents about 75 percent of the U.S. seafood industry, said Thursday their members want to see the ban enforced.

 

“We support the closing of this anachronistic loophole and look forward to fair and judicious implementation,†he said.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/26/obama-revives-anti-slavery-law-to-target-thailands-seafood-exports

 

And some really graphic stories below

 

Revealed: how the Thai fishing industry trafficks, imprisons and enslaves

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/20/thai-fishing-industry-implicated-enslavement-deaths-rohingya

 

Sold from a jungle camp to Thailand's fishing industry: 'I saw 13 people die'

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/20/sold-from-jungle-camp-thailand-fishing-industry-trafficking

[pasathai1]

= more money for the inspectors

[Coss]

further

 

http://www.humanrights.asia/news/forwarded-news/AHRC-FOL-002-2016

[scoobydoo]

a good farang female friend went to bkk, found gogo's unsettling and sad, suggested her tomyum goong in bkk was more exploitative .....couldn't get my point over

[Coss]

Most western ladies are protected by culture, to never have to see P4P, as anything other than evil of the first water.

[Flashermac]

So how about Indonesia?

 

...

 

In March 2015 an Associated Press investigation uncovered slavery-like practices in Indonesia’s fisheries, where hundreds of migrant workers, mostly from Myanmar – were kept in cages, forced to work and often beaten and tortured. The fish and seafood they catch is then transported to Thailand and via Thai companies is supplied to US businesses, including restaurants, major supermarkets and retailers, and pet shop. The report includes statements by US and Thai companies involved.

 

After the surfacing of the report, the Indonesia government rescued hundreds of workers and in April launched an investigation into fishing company Pusaka Benjina Resources. The company admitted the maltreatment of workers, but denied accusations that the workers were not paid and were held in cages. The police found that over 1,400 crewmembers were forced to work.

 

http://business-humanrights.org/en/indonesia-burmese-workers-in-slave-like-conditions-to-catch-seafood-supplying-us-businesses

 

 

http://www.ilo.org/jakarta/areasofwork/child-labour/lang--en/index.htm

 

http://www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/indonesia.htm

 

 

More than 700,000 people in Indonesia are estimated to live in modern slavery, according to a new index on global slavery that ranks the country eighth out of 167 countries based on the number of people subject to abuse such as forced labor, servitude or sexual exploitation.

 

The countries with the highest numbers of people in modern slavery are India, China, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Thailand. Together they account for 71% of the estimated 35.8 million people in modern slavery, says the 2014 Global Slavery Index, a report produced by global human rights organization the Walk Free Foundation. It defines modern slavery as “one person possessing or controlling another person in such a way as to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty.â€

 

 

http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2014/11/20/indonesia-8th-worst-slave-country-says-report/

[Coss]

I don't think that LOS is alone, far from it. Thainess however, suggests that no Thai is at fault.

[Flashermac]

I was surprised to see Russia in that list. I thought the days of slave labour there were over.

[pasathai1]

maybe they are instructed not to case a predominantly muslim country in a bad light

[Coss]

Human Trafficking on Trial in Thailand

 

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 25, 2016

 

The first witness in the largest human-trafficking trial in Thai history was called to testify last week in a court in Bangkok. The witness, a Rohingya Muslim from Myanmar, told of being beaten and starved by gun-toting captors on the boat that ferried him and more than 200 others to a trafficking camp in Thailand.

 

That witness is lucky to be alive: The trial was sparked by the grim discovery last May of a mass grave containing more than 30 bodies in a trafficking camp in southern Thailand. Faced with international outrage — and the lowest ranking on the State Department’s 2015 Trafficking in Persons report — the Thai government suddenly cracked down on trafficking rings in the region. Unfortunately, that created another catastrophe when thousands of people being held on the boats were abandoned at sea by panicked traffickers.

 

Traffickers in Thailand profit from Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar, Bangladeshis seeking work, and women and girls sold into the sex trade. Thailand’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry is also a powerful magnet for trafficking, with victims enslaved on commercial fishing boats. Last month, President Obama signed legislation effectively banning American imports of fish caught by slave labor.

 

The human-trafficking trial is an opportunity for Thailand to end the impunity that has allowed traffickers, and the officials who collude with them, to operate freely. The 92 defendants in the current trial include politicians, police officers and Lt. Gen. Manas Kongpaen, a senior army officer based in southern Thailand.

 

With the trial expected to last until the end of this year, the government must ensure the safety of the witnesses. Last December, the top investigator in the case, Maj. Gen. Paween Pongsirin, fled Thailand, saying he feared for his life after uncovering the involvement of senior military officers and other “influential people.â€

 

Some 3.7 million people have fled to Thailand, including an estimated 130,000 refugees. Thailand has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, and classifies all refugees as illegal migrants with no right to work legally, making them vulnerable to traffickers. It is time for Thailand to reform its asylum framework. That, together with justice for victims and reforms in the fishing industry, is the only way to end the unconscionable tragedy of human trafficking in Thailand.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/opinion/human-trafficking-on-trial-in-thailand.html?_r=0