Confined To A Thai Fishing Boat, For Three Years : NPR (wow! :-(

Vannak Prum of Cambodia was sold onto a Thai fishing boat where he was forced to work in miserable conditions for three years before escaping. Thailand's huge fishing industry is coming under increasing criticism for using trafficked workers who have been sold to unscrupulous ship captains.
Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Vannak Prum of Cambodia was sold onto a Thai fishing boat where he was forced to work in miserable conditions for three years before escaping. Thailand's huge fishing industry is coming under increasing criticism for using trafficked workers who have been sold to unscrupulous ship captains.

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June 19, 2012

Thailand supplies a large portion of America's seafood. But Thailand's giant fishing fleet is chronically short of up to 60,000 fishermen per year, leaving captains scrambling to find crew. Human traffickers have stepped in, selling captives from Cambodia and Myanmar to the captains for a few hundred dollars each. Once at sea, the men often go months, or even years, without setting foot on land.

First of two parts

Cambodian Vannak Prum's destiny changed in a dirt-road town called Malai. It's a Cambodian outpost on the border with Thailand that is known for its involvement in the trafficking of human beings.

Prum arrived in Malai seven years ago searching for work. His wife was pregnant, and he needed money for the hospital bill. He intended to work for two months, but ended up meeting a human trafficker.

A few days later, Prum was sold onto a Thai fishing boat the length of a basketball court, where he worked in tight conditions with 10 men. He says he didn't reach land again for three years.

"I didn't get paid," he says. "I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night."

As Thailand grows more prosperous, its citizens are shunning fishing work in which, even in the best cases, men are away for months chasing dwindling fish stocks.

Injuries and fatalities are common, and seasickness — at least in the beginning — is constant. Wicharn Sirichai-Ekawat owns a small fleet of fishing boats and consults with the National Fisheries Association of Thailand.

"There are about 150,000 men working on the boats, and about 40 percent of them are using foreign labor," he says. "We depend on them."

Some of these men are recruited legally, but others, like Prum, are sold into bondage. They report 20-hour days under mind-numbing conditions: minimal fresh food or water, no medicine apart from aspirin, cramped bunks, unsafe conditions and the relentless smell of fish.

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.
Enlarge Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.
Becky Palmstrom and Shannon Service for NPR

Prum drew this picture of the Thai boat on which he was held and forced to work as a fisherman.

"Sometimes the winch cable would accidentally cut off," Prum says. "If any of us stayed in front of it, the cable would injure or even kill us."

Ship bosses pose their own hazards. "One man's head was cut off and thrown in the water," Prum says. "I saw it."

Reports Of Abuse, Killings

The United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking interviewed fishermen on Thai boats who are from Myanmar, also known as Burma; 59 percent said they witnessed a murder by their captain.

The fishermen also said that captains often give workers drugs — mainly amphetamines — so they will keep working through the night.

The fishing boats are able to stay at sea for extended periods thanks to a network of shuttle boats, or motherships, that come and pick up the fish that's been caught and deliver fuel, food, ice and other supplies that fishing boats need to keep going.

Ultimately, Thai fish products show up on American shelves in a variety of ways, from fish sticks to pet food.

The Thai boats catch an estimated 1 in 5 pounds of American mackerel and sardines, and a good portion of anchovies on American pizzas. Thailand's two biggest seafood exports — farmed shrimp and tuna — are not implicated in these particular abuses, but have labor and environmental concerns of their own.

Now 33, Prum looks out the window in Malai, perplexed by the changes that have transformed the place over the past seven years.

"When I was here last, there was a roundabout," he says. "Now I'm lost, because they removed the traffic circle."

It's midnight, and Prum cruises slowly through the dark. He is looking for his trafficker.

A Network Of Traffickers

The man who sold Vannak Prum into these conditions is part of a loose network of human traffickers that stretches from the bustling ports of Thailand, deep into remote villages in neighboring Cambodia and Myanmar.

Malai's district chief, Tep Khunnal, says traffickers move people through the area's illegal border crossings with the help of the Cambodian military and police.

Stranded At Sea

Thailand Fishing

"I don't know if the Thai side takes money," he says, "but I know they take it on the Cambodian side." Khunnal says he wants to address the problem, but too many people profit from human smuggling.

In Prum's case, he met a taxi driver who convinced him to search for better paying work in Thailand. When the driver brought him to Malai, Prum was introduced to a man who was a trafficker, but Prum got cold feet and tried to back out.

The driver, however, presented Prum with a $12 tab for the trip, which Prum couldn't pay. The trafficker then stepped in and paid the fare, and that effectively sealed Prum's fate.

The trafficker then sold Prum to another set of smugglers in Thailand. The driver turned a profit, the trafficker turned a profit, the local money changer turned a profit — and Prum was locked up in a Thai port.

Prum pressed his face against a crack in the building.

"I saw the sea and boats," he says. "That's when I realized I was trafficked."

Officials Get A Cut

I didn't get paid. I remained in the middle of the sea and worked day and night.

- Vannak Prum, Cambodian who was held on a Thai fishing boat for three years

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch says Thai police also profit off of men like Prum.

"Most of the time when migrants are arrested, the police aren't planning to make a case or hand them over to immigration, as they're required to do," he says. "What they're doing is holding them and then trying to extort money out of them."

Thai police aren't alone.

"Every part of the Thai officers will benefit from this — the province, police, labor officers," says former Marine Police Commander Surapol Thuanthong. "They all get bribes from illegal migrants and related businesses."

Thuanthong says Thailand's Marine Police have tried to convince the Thai government to make the workers legal so they can be tracked and protected — but the sheer number of undocumented workers makes it impossible.

"[The government] says it's too many and will affect the stability of the country," he says. "So they don't do anything."

Building A System To Track Workers

Sirichai-Ekawat says the National Fisheries Association of Thailand is trying to establish recruitment centers to register and track workers willing to work Thai boats.

If it works, legalizing workers could undercut the black market in men. But it's too soon to tell if that plan will work. In the meantime, men like Prum continue to be sold onto the seas against their will.

This river of men weighs heavily on Prum's mind as he winds through Malai.

"I wanted to come help so Cambodians wouldn't go work in a foreign country," he says. "And now you see everything has changed completely — the road, the house — everything."

Prum didn't find his trafficker. He slumps against the car door.

If he had found him, what would he have done?

"I was angry before," says Prum, "because he did a bad thing. But now I don't feel any anger or revenge at all. I wanted to find him and tell him not to do this job anymore because it does harm. "

With that, the car turns around and drives past the empty money-changing stalls and the restaurants with cots for border-crossers set up in back. Prum keeps his gaze straight ahead as he leaves Malai. He doesn't say a word.

Several groups are helping ex-fishermen get back to their home countries and are supporting them once they get there. They include Tenaganita, Healthcare Center for Children, the Labor Protection Network and LICADHO. The Made in a Free World app lets you ask brands about labor practices in their supply chain as you shop.

Sex+Money and sex trafficking pandemic: One woman's crusade to end sex slavery

The newest documentary on sex trafficking in the US, Sex+Money, investigates and verifies the unbelievable depth of the human sex slavery in our country.  Executive producer, Morgan Perry, has coordinated the filming, along with the interviews of over 75 convicted pimps, victims, law enforcement officials and human services representatives to create a compelling look inside the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the planet.

In an interview with Miss Perry, her passion for the cause of stopping all sex slavery, including the heinous crime of children forced into prostitution, came across very strongly.  She attended the University of the Nations and majored in Communications in Mass Media with a special emphasis on addressing social injustice issues.  In 2007, she was part of an educational program that toured 20 countries in nine months, closely examining the social justice issues in each nation.  The heartbreaking thread that was common to all regions was the immense issue of children being sold as objects of rape by strangers numerous times each night.  In most places, the child prostitution was blatant and easily accessed.

Perry and four other students were galvanized into action.  They published a book, Sex+Money: A Global Search for Human Worth, then went on to uncover the lesser known problem of sex trafficking in the US. The result is the Sex+Money: A National Search for Human Worth documentary, which was released on DVD in August 2011.  The film team is currently on tour to all 50 states to screen the video, help raise awareness of the sex trafficking issue, and raise funds for StreetLight USA, a residential aftercare program for girls recovered from sex slavery.

Perry's findings of the current status of US sex slavery:

  • Recruitment of girls into forced child prostitution happens in very public places such as malls and bus stops.  Often underage girls are listed on Backpage.com and Craig's List.
  • Most common venues for the girls to be working:  Street prostitution, massage parlors, escort services, truck stops and airports
  • Pimps call local high schools "buffets" due to the high number of available vulnerable girls 
  • Pimps send teen boys and girls into the local high schools to "befriend" the lonely and disenfranchised students and invite them to an event (pimp party) where they will be "valued and included"--often meaning given drugs or alcohol and raped and then enslaved.

Factors contributing to the mushrooming sex trafficking pandemic

  • Five primary elements of DEMAND are pornography, prostitution, poverty, commercialization of sex in mainstream media, and the breakdown of the family
  • Internet pornography is a $15 billion industry with incredible ease of access 
  • Prostitution  is becoming a high-tech operation with many of the contacts made via internet.
  • False assumptions: Young girls on the streets, in porn pictures, or in sex ads are over 18, choose to be in the sex trades, or they are not worthy of intervention because they are "prostitutes".
  • The breakdown of the family.  Over 90% of children who end up with a pimp have already been abused or neglected.  Many have been sexually abused in foster care, by family members, or close acquaintances.  These victims become runaways to escape the pain, but are picked up by pimps within 48 hours on the street.
  • Because of the prior abuse and the beatings and threats from the pimps, the girls often feel helpless to leave or contact authorities.
  • State laws and law enforcement agencies often vilify and punish the children who are sex slaves and let the pimps and johns get off with minor consequences.

Determined to make a difference in the staggering sex trafficking statistics in this country, Morgan Perry is one of numerous twenty-something young people who are sounding the alarm.  She has networked with lawmakers, social service agencies, FBI, churches, juvenile corrections facilities, and major national organizations that are fighting sex slavery to catalyze citizens to take action.  Her nationwide crusade via the film, Sex+Money, is a practical, compelling picture of her own passion for the cause.

Additionally, Perry is part of PhotogenX, a non-profit organization that developed a Discipleship Training program to use photography to compel cultural change and create abolitionists who are equipped to challenge the social injustices of our day.

Readers are encouraged to purchase the Sex+Money DVD or attend a local screening of the film to show their support for Morgan and her team, and to make their own statement that sex slavery will no longer be tolerated.  Screenings of Sex+Money in Phoenix are December 3 and 5.

Posted on behalf of StreetLight USA.

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(c) 2011 Holly Craw.  All rights reserved.  You may link to this article or take an excerpt with due attribution to the author and a link back to this original article.  Mention your link below to get a shoutout.

Excellent article on one of our past students at UofN-Kona and the movie and book project she’s been involved with.

sex trafficking in Hawaii (quite an eye-opening article from the Honolulu StarAdvertiser)

STAR-ADVERTISER PHOTO ILLUSTRATION; PHOTO BY FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARADVERTISER.COM
The streets of Waikiki regularly teem with a variety of night life, as shown in this scene along Kuhio Avenue recently.

More Photos


INTRODUCTION

It’s called the world’s oldest profession, and it’s not exactly a new phenomenon in little Waikiki, either.

What is new is that Honolulu is about to move under the white-hot glare of international attention, and prostitution is not exactly what Hawaii leaders want to have front and center.

The advent of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in November has left Waikiki residents anticipating that the influx of some 20,000 attendees will create a surge in prostitution. And advocates for legislation to protect the victims of sex trafficking are afraid that the Waikiki sidewalk crowds will include some who were pressed into service against their will.

Kathryn Xian probably has the pressure of that impending event to thank for the legislation that finally was passed in the 2011 session, after years of her lobbying. Xian is director of advocacy for the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery, which this year pushed for passage of House Bill 240, the first measure that attempts to address the issue of sex trafficking in some way.

“We’ve been at this with them for six years,” Xian said. “The previous administration’s view was that if it (the law) was not broke, don't fix it. And also because the victims were viewed as part of the problem.”

HB 240 is still under review by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who has until July 12 to sign it or veto it; otherwise it becomes law without his signature.

This measure wasn’t what Xian and other advocates first proposed, either this year or in previous years. What they wanted was the creation of a new section of law to deal expressly with sex trafficking, establishing a set of new criminal terminology in which the person drawn into the sex trade is defined as a victim, not as a prostitute.

But Xian’s complaints about the Linda Lingle administration notwithstanding, the current city prosecutor agreed with the former governor that the sex trafficking bill offered both in 2010 and 2011 was the wrong approach. New legal definitions often get challenged in court, Keith Kaneshiro said, so he found Lingle’s veto to be based on sound reasoning.

Instead, Kaneshiro’s staff worked with state Sen. Clayton Hee and other lawmakers to craft a bill aimed at working within tried and tested legal definitions.

“We thought, ‘Why don’t we try to take the concerns of the human-trafficking people and look at how we can address the concerns?’” he said. The result was a law that offered witness protection to those coerced into prostitution if they testify against those profiting from their work; hardened penalties against the people who got them into it; and toughened penalties for the “johns” who frequent prostitutes.

The term “sex trafficking” never appears in the bill.

Hee believes it will work, because it focused on the needs of people affected.

“It’s always one thing to construct laws in the abstract,” he said, “but this law resulted from real-life people sharing real-life examples.”

———

The Polaris Project is a national nonprofit that bird-dogs all the state legislation aimed at curbing the trafficking of youths and adults into the sex trade. In the eyes of its policy counsel, Hawaii is beginning a long trek upwards from the absolute bottom of the heap.

It's not taking a path the group generally prescribes, said Jim Dold, but maybe that's OK. Whatever works.

"Sometimes the best approach is just going in there and increasing penalties," Dold said. "Each state has its own issues, and each state is responding differently."

That charitable assessment aside, Polaris still officially has Hawaii listed as one of the "Dirty Dozen": the 12 U.S. states lacking in large measure the laws it favors as weapons in the war on sex trafficking.

It's hard to know how or whether Hawaii's grade will improve once the fate of House Bill 240, as well as some other measures, is decided. HB 240 is the primary measure dealing with the issue that passed in the recent legislative session, and it's unknown whether Gov. Neil Abercrombie will shepherd it finally into law.

The 2011 bill takes a different approach from legislation that passed last year, only to be vetoed by then-Gov. Linda Lingle. At that time lawmakers passed Senate Bill 2045, which created a new section criminalizing "sexual human trafficking."

The veto dismayed its advocates, but upon taking office, Honolulu City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro examined the issue and ultimately agreed with Lingle's reasoning.

"Using the word trafficking, we never had trafficking defined," Kaneshiro said. "And there's going to be all kinds of interpretation, so of course it's going to delay. It's going to go to the Supreme Court for a firm definition.

"It's in vogue to use the term, it's politically correct. That's the term that's going around, and everybody's using now," he added. "For us in the legal system, it may be in vogue but now it has to be tested. It's going to cause more problems for us."

Instead, Kaneshiro's staff worked with the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman — Sen. Clayton Hee — and other lawmakers to toughen up existing statutes that target the demand side of the prostitution problem, adding penalties for the "johns," as well as for those making the biggest profits.

Groups worried about the state's approach to human trafficking were uneasy that there was no terminology in law distinguishing the pimps for willing prostitutes from those engaging in what they view as a modern-day form of slavery. But Kaneshiro is resolute on that point.

"One of the things the human trafficking people wanted: ‘Can't you use, instead of calling it "promoting prostitution," can you call it "sex trafficking?"' And I said no. It's going to deflect from what we're trying to accomplish."

The focus of HB 240 is the "promoting prostitution" section of the statute, and if the bill becomes law, people who coerce or push people into prostitution through fraud will be considered to be committing the offense. These are people who are sex traffickers by another name, Hee said.

"This is the best effort by lawmakers to put together broad-based approach to sex trafficking," he added.

Hee's counterpart chairman in the House, Rep. Gilbert Keith-Agaran, agreed, but acknowledged that hardening the statutes won't be enough. Whether it's sex trafficking or any other kind of human trafficking — such as the Thai slave labor being prosecuted in federal court — better training of law enforcement and government agencies is an important component.

"One of the lawyers for the Thai laborers said one of the victims of trafficking at the farms went to an official at the labor department to complain, but (the official) didn't look into it any further," Keith-Agaran said.

The actual impact of legislative changes is hard to gauge, given that there are no clear numbers on trafficking to serve as a baseline. Kaneshiro said getting a better idea of the scale will be one job for his office.

Also unknown: whether providing witness protection to the victims of sex trafficking will help.

"For all these people who testify and say they're victims, not too many have come forward to say, ‘Can you come and prosecute the people who fostered this?'" Kaneshiro said.

Some people have their doubts. Tracy Ryan, who chairs the Libertarian Party of Hawaii and who has favored the legalization of prostitution, does not object to prosecuting those who are truly in the trade against their will or through misrepresentation of some kind.

But there are many cases of prostitutes who were convinced their pimp loves them, she said, and not many of them are willing to step up as witnesses for the prosecution.

Among her other objections are that prison populations and costs will increase; that few johns are repeat offenders, making the new "habitual solicitation" offense pointless; and that many offenders are engaging in a consensual act.

"The rational bases for the whole set of ideas is not supported by any real understanding of the sex industry and seems primarily aimed at pandering to the wishes of radical feminists who have zero expertise," she said in an emailed response to the Star-Advertiser.

One of the primary advocates of sex-trafficking legislation is Kathy Xian, and she takes exception to that characterization. Xian said her Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery organization has intervened for six years on behalf of those she prefers to call "prostituted persons." Very little about what they do is consensual, she added.

"After you establish trust with them, they all say the same thing: ‘Nobody in their right mind would do this,'" Xian said.

"The unfair bias against women is the assumption that a woman would want to engage in prostitution," she added. "Reality says to us that that is not the case, but that these people have been relegated to a very small choice, and we would argue that it isn't a choice. These traffickers steal these girls' lives away."

Xian agreed that better statistics would help, but she predicted that new protections for victims will drive better prosecution.

"Come July 1 when they take effect we will see more traffickers come to justice," she said. "And we will see more victims come through our doors, so social services better get ready."