The United States has urged Thailand to improve its systems for protecting victims of human trafficking, especially those pressed into forced labour by growing numbers of cyber-scam gangs.
The message was delivered during a virtual media briefing on Wednesday by Cindy Dyer, the US ambassador-at-large to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the US Department of States. She discussed the department’s 2023 Trafficking in Persons Report and the work the US government is doing to combat human trafficking globally and in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to the 2023 report released on June 15, Thailand remains a Tier 2 country — meaning it has yet to fully comply with internationally agreed standards meant to prevent human trafficking but is making “significant effort” to that effect.
Ms Dyer said that in particular, the Thai government had not made sufficient efforts to protect trafficking victims who are exploited as forced labour. This includes those drawn to cyber scam operations in neighbouring countries, including Thai citizens, and those who enter the country illegally as a result of them having been exploited.
She also pointed out that instead of identifying them, government officials often place foreign victims in immigration detention centres, and even arrest them — including Thai citizens — for unlawful acts they committed as a direct result of being trafficked in illicit operations.
Ms Dyer said there were also significant gaps in the services provided to victims — a gap she urged Thailand to comprehensively plug.
Despite it not having fully met the minimum standard for Tier 1 status, however, the Thai government has made significant efforts to counter trafficking, she said.
She noted the government had been ramping up its efforts compared with the previous reporting period, during which it was seen as not having done enough to justify elevation above Tier 2.
Ms Dyer said the country had been increasing its investigations, prosecutions and convictions in cases of human trafficking. It also launched an investigation into 35 officials who were allegedly complicit in such wrongdoing, and punished four of them jail terms, she noted.
“This is something that we encourage people to do because there are many cases of labour traffickers relying on complicit government officials. Sometimes we see countries that, even if they have convictions, there are some very low fines or very low jail time,” she said.
“So we were impressed that the four [officials] did receive terms of imprisonment. The government also identified more trafficking victims and began the implementation of a national referral mechanism.”
Ms Dyer was also questioned about the work being done to help those who are trafficked through the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone and Thailand’s neighbouring countries. She referred to the analysis in the TIP report, noting that the forced recruitment of victims to engage in criminal cyber scam operations has been growing visibly.
She said traffickers have taken advantage of economic hardship, global youth unemployment and international travel restrictions tied to the pandemic to exploit thousand of adults and children by bringing them into this multi-billion-dollar industry.
“As flagged, cyber scams have been found in these countries and special economic zones in Southeast Asia. We have Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines, and specifically, some of those special economic zones,” she said. “The report also shows that the victims of these scams have been identified in 35 countries around the world.”
To combat this, she said Washington has been encouraging governments and authorities to prioritise proactively identifying and assisting victims, and also raise awareness of the issue to warn people just how prevalent these scams are.
“However, the problem is that the individuals — many of whom have an education, degrees, linguistic or IT skills — are responding to job advertisement that appear to be legitimate,” she said.
“So we are engaging with governments to really proactive warn people … so they are protected from these recruitment schemes.”