Anti-human trafficking laws should be expanded to cover trafficking of illegal immigrants, the Lawyers Council says.
Surapong Kongchantuk, chairman of the sub-committee on stateless people, transnational labour and displaced persons of the Lawyers Council of Thailand, yesterday said illegal immigrants may have been brought here by a trafficking network and so may be regarded as victims of someone else.
If they are found to have bogus passports, they stand to be charged under Thai law, even though in foreign jurisdictions they would still be regarded as "victims" if the passport was provided by a trafficking ring.
His call follows a case in which the Samut Prakan provincial court on Wednesday sentenced a Palestinian asylum seeker to two years in jail for passport forgery.
The asylum seeker was given the sentence despite the fact he himself was a victim of a human trafficking ring that lured him into believing they could help him seek asylum in Sweden by migrating through Thailand, Mr Surapong said.
Unlike in Thailand, countries in the European Union (EU) do not consider asylum-seekers as criminal suspects although they may carry such bogus passports, he said.
In the EU, the people who stand to be prosecuted for the fake passports held by illegal immigrants are the trafficking gangs.
The Palestinian asylum seeker was prosecuted over the passport he held while the gang behind his illegal entry into Thailand still roams free, Mr Surapong said.
The irony is that Thailand says it is attempting to fight trafficking more efficiently in the hope of leaving Tier 3 status under the US Trafficking in Persons report, but there are still no laws to deal specifically with the trafficking of illegal immigrants, he said.
Last year Thailand was downgraded from Tier 2 to Tier 3 − the lowest rank − in the report, an instrument used by the US to assess the state of anti-trafficking responses in other countries.
Human trafficking will never be curbed without better prevention steps and cooperation on suppression with other countries, he said.