Thai NGOs worried over rising human trafficking

BANGKOK, June 4 (TNA) - Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have expressed concerns over an increase in human trafficking in Thailand, as the country observes the National Anti Human Trafficking Day on June 5. Updated information released on Monday by Thailand's NGOs network found that children and women remain prime targets of human trafficking gangs, as they have mostly been lured from the Thai North, with Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat province in the Thai deep South being a major transit destination for the human trafficking, before they are forced to cross the border and sold in Malaysia. The information showed that three major routes have been used by human trafficking gangs. On the first route, children and young women have been forced to cross Myanmar’s Tha Chilek border town to Mae Sai district in Thailand's northern Chiang Rai province and they will then be sent by Myanmar and Thai agents to the Thai deep South. On the second major route, the victims are taken by boat from Myanmar’s Myawaddy city to Mae Sot district in Thailand's northwestern Tak province, where they stay at refugee camps before being taken out by traffickers with children sent to work in the fishing industry and women to work as prostitutes in Bangkok's suburban Samut Sakhon province. On the third route, young women have been lured from Vientiane, Lao capital, and enter the Thai northeastern Nong Khai province and the women will later be sent to work as prostitutes mostly in Thailand's Northeast. Traffickers reportedly receive 50,000 baht for each girl. It is feared that human trafficking should become more severe after the ASEAN Economic Community is established by 2015 due to regional liberalization in all areas, including movements of people. Meanwhile, Police Lieutenant Colonel Paisit Sangkhapong of the Department of Special Investigation (DSI) said that Thai laws on human trafficking have been amended under which human trafficking cases are now considered special cases, as human trafficking is trans-national crime with money circulated in illegal practices amounting up to trillion baht. The DSI officer acknowledged that human trafficking cases in Thailand last year alone soared to 106, up almost double from a year earlier. The US State Department has placed Thailand on its "Watch List", under which Thailand has been closely monitored on human trafficking abuses. If the situation was considered deteriorating, Washington might boycott the kingdom by imposing a ban on Thai exports produced from victims of human trafficking gangs, namely fishery products. (TNA)