Many migrants who sign up to work in Thailand’s fishing industry have no idea what awaits. Many are tricked and promised steady work with monthly earnings to deceive them into modern slavery.
The reported conditions are hellish: beatings, workers being thrown overboard — over half of the 49 trafficked migrants in a 2009 report had witnessed the murder of a fellow worker. More recently, a 2017 study examined the experiences of Cambodian and Burmese labourers working in Thailand’s fishing industry. It found that 76 percent of migrant workers in the Thai fishing industry had been held in debt bondage and almost 38 percent had been trafficked into the industry.
Fisheries are big business: global fisheries and aquaculture captured 179 million tonnes in 2018, and an estimated 10 to 12 percent of the world’s population worked in the fishing industry during that period. In 2019, Thailand was ranked as one of the top fish-producing nations in the world. It is also ranked as one of the highest-risk countries due to its modern slavery practices in its fishing industry, with an estimated 610,000 victims.
