By Matt Rusling
Mahachai, Thailand — While interviewing Burmese human trafficking victims near Bangkok, I met Kasanti, who opted tostay at the factory that had once enslaved her, even after she was allowed to leave.
After transporting her from Burma to a job in a Thai factory, a trafficker locked up the 42-year-old mother of four, had guards escort her to work everyday and confiscated her pay. Kasanti was allowed no contact with the world outside and remained imprisoned until she payed back the transportation costs.
When I asked how she could stay at the same factory where she was once enslaved, she said simply: “They don’t take my money anymore,” explaining that the trafficker is long gone and the factory owner allows her to keep all the money she earns.
As a Westerner, used to relatively fair treatment at work and certainly never experiencing slavery, I was floored when I first heard this. But such attitudes are common among Burmese migrants here, as some believe being held in debt bondage for a time is a normal part of coming to a better life in neighboring Thailand, a Burmese activist told me.
Experiences and attitudes vary, however. Some caught in a trafficker’s web are beaten, raped and tortured before escaping Thailand and have no desire to return. Others work for free until their “debt” is paid off, then move to another workplace and collect a steady paycheck. Some are killed.
Brokers who arrange travel to jobs in Thailand are a mixed bag as well. Some are honest, simply smuggling people for a fee. Many are not, selling victims into slavery. And not all human traffickers are part of vast criminal networks. Many are mom-and-pop operations, or “disorganized crime,” said W. Courtland Robinson, author of a UN study on Burmese trafficking victims in Thailand. In many cases, the operation is just a guy on the border who knows how to find desperate migrants and deliver them to a shady factory owner he knows.
I want to point out here that I am not saying that debt bondage is ok. Of course it is not. I am just reporting what victims and Burmese activists have told me.
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