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The plight of Thailand's migrant workers
Written by: Peter Biro
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Kor Lung Ta (left) has worked on Thai building sites for 20 years. Employers never issue workers protective equipment, such as helmets. "I have seen many people die," he says. Peter Biro/The IRC.
About an hour's drive west of Thailand's second largest city of Chiang Mai is Pong Yang Nai, a cluster of small farms surrounded by hills covered with lush vegetation. At this time of year, a merciless sun beats down on the agricultural workers ploughing the fields or planting chilies, flowers and vegetables. On any given day as many as 800 people labour here - the majority are impoverished migrant workers from neighboring Burma. In the shade of a bamboo shelter by a row of small flowers that will later be picked and sold for use in Buddhist ceremonies, I sit down with Nang Kham, 37. She says that she left her village in Burma eight years ago. "I worked on a farm there too," Nang Kham says. "But life was much harder. I couldn't make any money because the Burmese army forced me to give them some of my money every month. Since we were so poor, I couldn't send my children to school." Nang Kham's plight is shared by almost two million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand. The majority have fled forced labor, extortion and repression in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Nang Kham is a member of the Shan minority group. Like the Karen and Karenni minorities, the Shan have long suffered from poverty and human rights abuses in eastern Burma. Last year an estimated 66,000 people of various ethnic backgrounds were forced to leave their homes because of forced labour, land confiscation, involuntary relocation and other abuses carried out by the Burmese regime. Those who don't end up in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border toil in dirty, dangerous and low-paying jobs in factories, on construction sites and farms or on fishing boats.
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Peter Biro is a senior communications officer with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He is responsible for covering the IRC's emergency and development work, most recently in Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Indonesia, Iraq, Liberia, Sudan and Thailand. Biro, who was born in Sweden, has also worked as a journalist and photographer in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America and for the United Nations in Kosovo, East Timor, Cambodia and Sierra Leone.
20 Mar 2009 16:40:19 GMT
The plight of migrant workers in Thailand is as the same as many Asian migrant workers who are working in many Asian developed rich countries. Some countries Like Singapore and Korea they are well paid and look after in health care and other requirements. In some Asian countries these migrant workers are abused and work on poor pay without any health care and in living under worst living conditions. In developing Asian countries like Thailand, Malaysia many thousands migrant workers from Burma Bangladesh India and Srilanka are working without any work permit on low pay for years. Reason why most of these poor civilian work force are driven out the their own countries need to be examined and IRC and other international aid agencies should expose those matters too in the interest of a better way for these migrant workers in their own countries.
Countries like Burma Srilanka and Bangladesh are experiencing political calamities during the last fifty years which has forced millions of refugees out of their own countries in search of jobs and better life to many developed industrial countries. Bangladesh besides political calamities is hit very badly by global warming causing shrinking lands because of rivers flooding and cyclonic weathers. Srilanka and Burma are undergoing a long Ethnic cleansing war against the minority communities in these two countries by the Buddhist majority Armed forces of these nations. In Burma Army runs a authoritarian rule against the democratic forces of Burma expelling even poor Buddhist farmers out of their land into Thailand. The funniest thing is that both these countries Srilanka and Burma are actively committing these human right violation with the full backing from two Asian economic powers India and China. Aid agencies like IRC should also wage a campaign regarding these exploitation in poor countries so that democratic forces in these countries will raise against the rulers in establishing a true democratic foundation protecting all citizens.09 Jun 2009 07:28:38 GMT
There are currently about 138,000 Burmese refugees in camps on the Thai-Burma border. Many more hundreds of thousand Burmese asylum seekers, migrant workers and refugees have fled from the oppressive Burmese regime; and are in Thailand neighboring countries, or in third countries.
Often, refugees remain in Thailand for extended periods (some up to 10 years), either because they would have difficulty coping with their new environment overseas, or because they are not sufficiently vulnerable to find themselves at the front of the resettlement queue. (Jesuit Refugee Service) According to Associated Press news, released on Monday, June 8, 2009; 3,000 villagers flee Myanmar shelling Aid groups say it is one of the largest movements of refugees across the border in a decade. http://www.thonline.com/