Labor
Illegal labor
Hoping for upgrade on trafficking rank

Thailand has said its battle against modern forms of slavery has netted a lot of “big fish” in human trafficking syndicates, including senior government officials. Given this, the country is hopeful of being upgraded in coming days from the lowest rank in the United States’ ...
As surrogacy industry expands, legal and ethical issues mulled

Despite a veil of secrecy, details are beginning to emerge about Cambodia’s burgeoning commercial surrogacy industry. In an article on the website Gays With Kids, a British-Polish couple has revealed how they became parents of one of the first surrogate babies born in Cambodia earlier this ...
DSI pledges to push trafficking cases

With more than 1,000 human-trafficking cases pending in the courts including a large number of Myanmar victims, Thailand has promised to speed up the legal process, the Department of Special Investigation deputy chief Pol Colonel Songsak Raksaksakul said on 14 June. Songsak met on 14 June with ...
Abandoned Rohingya migrants reveal new smuggling route

Police apprehended 13 illegal Rohingya migrants left on a roadside in Chumphon province on 27 April, learning that the Malaysia-bound Muslims were being smuggled on a previously unknown route. Keep reading ...
PM casts fisheries chief adrift

The regime has decided to remove Thailand Fisheries Department chief Wimol Jantrarotai for making slow progress in addressing illegal fishing amid concerns Thailand is still at risk of being slapped with a red card by the European Union. Keep reading ...
Myanmar fishing slaves in Indonesia to go home, ‘tip of the iceberg’

A final group of 24 fishing boat slaves is preparing to return home to Burma this week from Indonesia, aid workers said at a trafficking meeting in Bali, one of them calling the 1,200 slaves repatriated since last year the “tip of the iceberg.” Keep reading ...
ASEAN integration fuelling trafficking, crime
Southeast Asia is witnessing an explosion of organised crime thanks to increasing economic integration, according to a new United Nations report. The illegal trafficking of people, drugs, counterfeit goods and wildlife is already estimated to exceed US$100 billion a year – more than the GDP of ...
Thai officials return local migrants

Thailand will send 77 illegal Cambodian migrant workers home on 19 February after they were rounded up at a construction site in the southern peninsula of the country, border authorities said on 18 February. Sin Nam Yong, a border official in Banteay Meanchey’s Poipet town, said ...
Thai police rescue 29 Myanmar trafficking victims
Thai authorities have rescued nearly 30 Myanmar victims from alleged human traffickers’ hands in Phuket province. Keep reading ...
Government tackles Thais illegally working abroad

Thailand’s Department of Employment is aiming to tackle the growing problem of Thais travelling abroad to work illegally, especially in South Korea. Arak Phrommanee, the department’s director-general, said there had been an increasing incidence of Thais travelling to South Korea as tourists and then picking up jobs without ...