Human trafficking

Malaysia and Thailand have agreed to build a wall along their common border next year amid growing concerns about human trafficking. The 640-kilometer Malaysia-Thailand border has long been the site of transnational crime, including the rampant smuggling of weapons, drugs, and people. Keep reading ...

Measures to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing practices should be accompanied by rigorous labour protection measures, activists said on 9 September at a Chulalongkorn University seminar. Following the European Union’s final warning — a yellow card issued to Thailand in late April — the government has rolled ...

Seventeen laborers from Cambodia have returned home after they were trafficked to work in Thailand’s logging industry and had their pay withheld, forcing them to walk back to the border, a rights group said on 2 September. The 17 had been lured into Thailand with promises ...

The government will continue to coordinate with the Thai Embassy in Laos to provide assistance and repatriate Lao workers who were found enslaved and kept in cages on a farm in Thailand.  Keep reading ...

Thirteen illegal Lao labour immigrants who were rescued from an alleged “slavery farm” in Nakhon Pathom are being treated as witnesses in a suspected human trafficking case. The immigrants, some as young as 15 years old, will not be charged with illegal entry into Thailand because they ...

New mass graves with 24 bodies thought to be those of migrants have been found in Malaysia, police say. The graves were found in the state of Perlis near the Thai border not far from 139 grave sites unearthed in May, Perlis police chief Shafie Ismail ...

Costco Wholesale Corp was sued for selling farmed shrimp from Thailand, where slave labour and human trafficking in the fishing industry are widespread, and allegedly misleading US consumers about it. A California woman, Monica Sud, filed what may be the first such lawsuit against the retailer ...

The crime of trafficking in persons affects virtually every country in every region in the world, but the Southeast Asian region in particular is hosting a robust flow of trans-regional trafficking in persons for forced labor and sexual exploitation involving thousands of men, women and ...

The return of hundreds more Myanmar fishermen found in slave-like conditions in Indonesia could be in jeopardy.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the embassy in Jakarta separated the rescued men into two different categories: trafficking victims and non-trafficked “slaves”. The 91 who have been identified as ...

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill yesterday pledged his nation’s support in tackling human trafficking as he confirmed the seizure of a boat carrying alleged slaves from Myanmar and Cambodia. Mr O’Neill said the eight people were rescued from the fishing boat Blissful Reefer. Keep reading ...