Link: https://www.pattayadailynews.com/shownews.php?IDNEWS=0000002594
News has just come to our attention regarding a Thai human trafficking gang using press-gang techniques and drugging individuals to send them to work on fishing boats operating out of such places as Nakornsritamrat.
Recently, two young men from Buriram were kidnapped by a trafficking gang on their first day of arrival in Bangkok, while looking for work. After being drugged, presumably with something similar to chloroform, the two were transported, unconscious, to a fishing port and effectively imprisoned on a fishing boat for 8 months.
The two men, Messrs. Top and Wirat, both aged 16, who are cousins, live in Buriram in Northeast Thailand. After finishing 9 years of compulsory schooling, they could not afford to continue their education and having little employment opportunities in the area, they caught a bus from Buriram to Bangkok to see Top?s father, who works as a worker in a building site.
They arrived at Morchit, the Northern Bangkok Bus Terminal, very early one morning, and when they went to the toilet, they saw a group of men coming in, but they didn?t take any notice of them. What happened next is not absolutely clear as the next thing they were aware of was waking up on a fishing boat, which was anchored somewhere between Malaysia and Indonesia.
The boys told our reporter that there were seven people all told on the boat: the captain, a cook, a mechanic and another two men who had been kidnapping like them, one from Chiangrai and the other from Bangkae, Bangkok. These two latter individuals were older, around 30 years-of-age.
The crew had first to catch the fish using a purse seine net, following which, they had to separate the fish. On the waning moon, they had to go out to put the net in the sea two times a day, at 5.00 pm and 8.00 pm, but on the waxing moon, they worked all day and all night, only being allowed to sleep when they could no longer stand up. They ate two meals a day, but never got paid. They missed their home badly, but could not ask for freedom because they had heard of occasions when individuals were killed and thrown into the deep water. Being so far out to sea, it would be a considerable time before their bodies would be recovered, if at all! Top told our reporter that he had to work really hard, by day and by night, praying that one day he would be allowed to come home to be with his family again.
On 23rd. February 2007, the two Buriramians were eventually released, after begging the captain to be allowed to visit their home. The captain dropped them off at the railway station in Nakornsritamrat and gave them 3000 Baht each, informing them that the ?broker? (i.e. the kidnapper) had already received all his fees from the captain. The family were overjoyed to have them back again.
Originally, the family had reported the missing boys to the ?Missing People Centre in Bangkok. Following which, Mr. Ekaluk , the chief of the centre, sent people to find them by searching Morchit Bus Station and were lucky enough to find some witnesses who had seen them, but no more information was available, consequently, they assumed that the two boys had got a job somewhere in Bangkok.
The boys told our reporter that they could remember the boat quite well. It was a huge boat that had 8 deep-freeze rooms to preserve the fish, but there were only seven people working on the boat. Consequently, everyone had to work really hard.
They were told by the captain that originally two other men and themselves, four in all, were taken from Bangkok to Mahachai, near Samutsakorn, a large salt-working area. Here, the four people were sold to a trafficker for a total of 50,000 Baht. After that, they all were transferred by truck to Pakpanang, in the south of Thailand; from there they were delivered to the boat.
For the whole of the time, they were unconscious. All the foregoing circumstances had been related to them by the captain. They all eventually recovered consciousness on the boat.
The Missing People Centre Chief also told our reporter that they don?t believe that the gangsters had used drugs like a spray or cream, it was most likely chloroform, which was put on a cloth and then applied to the victims? faces. According to the records of the Missing People Centre, these gangs always work in the early morning when the people have just arrived from a long journey and are exhausted. There was a case of a man from Srisaket who had been sold 6 times and had had to work for 2 years; he is still suffering from the psychological trauma of these experiences. This latter victim said that he had seen workers like himself who had been beaten up and thrown into the sea. All the fishermen were on the boats against their will and almost no one got paid.
The Social Development Office in Bangkok later gave 1,900 Baht each to the boys, Top and Wirat, and enrolled them in a vocational training centre where they will receive training which will equip them to get a better job.
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Human traffic!
Mar 23, 2007 @ 09:53:08
