The government's plans to issue more rules and regulations to combat human trafficking are bound to come to nothing when the crux of the problem remains untouched — corruption.
Prime Minister and junta leader Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha this week ordered state agencies concerned with human trafficking prevention to shape up, and report back to him on what they are doing to save the country from further international condemnation and trade boycotts.
Such an order from the top was meant to show the United States and the European Union, the country's major trade partners, that Thailand is stepping up its anti-human trafficking measures. The aims are to convince the US and EU to remove Thailand from the blacklist for becoming the hub of a modern-day slave trade.
The US this year downgraded Thailand to the lowest tier in its human trafficking report. The blacklisting has undermined diplomatic relations, the country's image, and exports — particularly in seafood. Thailand is the world's third largest seafood exporting country.
The EU has also given Thailand a "yellow card", telling the country to clean up the fishing industry within six months or face EU boycotts of Thai seafood. Thai trawlers are notorious not only for using slave migrant labour but also for their environmentally destructive fishing operations.
As under previous governments, Gen Prayut's meeting ended with the setting up of sub-committees to tackle different aspects of human trafficking. While it is useful to have better coordination between state agencies and new rules to fix legal loopholes, the government has completely missed why past anti-trafficking efforts have failed.
The US State Department's 2014 Trafficking in Persons report made it clear Thailand's moves to stop trafficking are being hampered by corruption at all levels. Corrupt officials aid human traffickers in their cross-border organised crimes. Then they take bribes to protect traffickers, brothel operators and commercial trawlers that use slave labour.
The report also accuses police and immigration officials of selling migrants to sex traffickers and commercial trawlers in need of cheap, hard labour.
The initial moves from the military junta right after the US blacklisting were promising, because it stopped denying the truth. But it stopped there.
In June, Gen Phaiboon Khumchaya, then the assistant army chief and now the justice minister, conceded that weak enforcement of anti-human trafficking laws and corruption were to blame for the US decision to blacklist Thailand.
Corruption most likely leads to lax law enforcement and a low rate of legal persecution, he admitted; only about one in seven human trafficking cases is sent to court.
Since corruption is a key culprit, the government must show clear commitment to tackle it by arresting and prosecuting corrupt officials, traffickers, labour brokers and businesses that employ slave labour.
For starters, the government must stop denying human trafficking by calling it voluntary human smuggling. Although most victims want to flee hardship in their countries, there is ample evidence of fraud, physical violence, extortion and ransom. The plight of ethnic Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar and Bangladesh is a case in point.
These victims can provide witness accounts and evidence that will lead to arrest and prosecution of traffickers, corrupt officials and abusive employers.
Any new rules to regulate migrant labour and the fishing industry must also allow input from human rights groups. Letting officialdom dominate would mean more red tape and smokescreen measures to protect corrupt officials, enabling the continuation of modern slavery and a perpetual bad name for the country.