For Malaysia and Cuba it was a good week, locked for the moment in the embrace of The Superpower, and off the hook for human trafficking. Rewards favoured the member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership for higher drug prices and the worst human rights violator in the entire Western Hemisphere.
On the other hand, Thailand collectively had much the same feeling last week as Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad did in 2009. His life-threatening efforts to foster interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East were rubbished in Oslo in order to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama for the stellar achievement of not being George W Bush.
Even casual sports fans recognised Thailand’s official reaction: Wait until next year. “We are doing well and we are confident,” said Gen Prime Minister Prayut.
For the few who are unfamiliar with the pessimistic optimism of “Wait until next year”, a quick trip to Google images will convey the decidedly gloomy visages behind the cheery phrase. It is the desperate hope of supporters of causes like US baseball’s Chicago Cubs (107 years without a championship), Australian footy’s St Kilda (49 years) — and any England national team, every sport, since the 1966 World Cup.
“We will get out of Tier 3 in 2016” carries the same confidence that this time, Myanmar really will stamp out the big-time drug traffickers.
And US Secretary of State John “Why The Long Face?” Kerry had to rub it in. “We must never, ever allow a price tag to be attached to the heart and soul and freedom of a fellow human being,” Mr Kerry said. And then he did.
No doubt the TIP report was particularly unfair this year, parts of it politicised by Mr Obama, his yes-men or both.
Even as the arguments and lamentations continued, yet another Thai-directed slavery operation was busted. Six Cambodians and two Myanmar men were rescued after authorities seized and boarded the Blissful Reefer, a massive transport ship acting as a “factory” for dozens of illegal fishing trawlers off of Papua New Guinea.
Blissful Reefer is part of what might be called the Benjina slave ring. Another mother ship for trawlers, the Silver Sea 2, was tracked by a satellite firm hired by the Associated Press news agency. Reporters and satellite operators watched it load fish from trawler after trawler.
Of course, catching such trawlers and freeing their slave labour is far too difficult for authorities. Only reporters can do that.
If that seems harsh, consider that in the opinion of the foreign minister the country has made “significant efforts”.
In one way it has — but that is in comparison with efforts by previous governments, which could fairly be described as “insignificant”.
Faced with the same choice as other premiers, civilian and military, or whether to actually act on embarrassing evidence, Gen Prayut personally ordered action. This separates him from his predecessors who, to a man — and woman — quickly looked away.
Still, what the US report said was this:
As of March 31, “The Government of Thailand does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so. Thailand investigated and prosecuted some cases against corrupt officials involved in trafficking but trafficking-related corruption continued to impede progress in combating trafficking.”
Consider what was done in the past four eventful months.
A Rohingya-Thai citizen complained to authorities that human traffickers had abducted his cousin from Myanmar and if he did not pay a large bundle of baht they would kill him. When that appeared in the press, but not before, a jungle camp and then a series of jungle camps turned up, showing where many Rohingya died and were quickly buried. The Rohingya informant is living in a police station in constant terror because the men charged in this case are intimidating witnesses daily, with impunity.
The slave boats continue, as described above. As enslaved fishermen are brought home from Indonesia, most of them Thai, the companies involved continue to operate fully licensed fishing boats and shanghai replacements, only mostly Cambodians and Lao. The boats of the above stories belong to Silver Sea Fishery of Samut Prakan.
Gen Prayut and underlings are rushing to comply with the European Union’s yellow-card warning, but that is all paperwork and red tape. The EU doesn’t demand a clean-up of slavery. It wants a paper trail showing Thai seafood is legal, no matter who catches and packs it.
And to close the circle, anyone reading the lengthy “recommendations” from Washington on how to get out of Tier 3 will also notice the extensive references to paperwork over actual humanity.
Life isn’t fair for Thailand in the TIP reporting. It’s also not fair for tens of thousands outside the modest, narrow achievements thus far against 21st century slavery.