| Home > South-East Asia >> Burma | |
Illegal migrant workers fear coming crackdown
Irrawaddy - May 25, 2010
Alex Ellgee, Mae Sot – "We lived like animals for the last week so we are happy to be back," Aung Tin Oo said softly, sipping his sweet coffee at a teashop outside a factory in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burma border. "But we are ready to go back at any moment."
One week ago, as Aung Tin Oo began his early factory shift, news filled the factory floor of immigration arrests taking place across Mae Sot. Before he had set up his sewing machine for work, seven police vehicles appeared outside the factory and some workers said a police officer was talking with the factory owner.
"We thought he might be making a deal with the policeman to hand us over," said Aung Tin Oo anxiously, smoking his Burmese cigar. As surreal as it sounds, factory owners making "deals" is not a farfetched concept in Mae Sot, where money often changes hands at the expense of illegal migrants.
Being one of the factory worker leaders, the responsibility was in Aung Tin Oo's hands to decide how the workers should react to the situation at hand, which potentially could see all illegal migrants paying heavy fines or spending months in a Thai prison.
Faced with such risks, he ordered the illegal workers to flee. Within minutes, more than 200 workers had gathered their few belongings and fled into the jungle surrounding the factory.
For seven days, Aung Tin Oo, a pseudonym, said the migrants slept on the ground in the jungle, terrified that the Thai police would storm their makeshift encampment. "Everyone was so scared, they slept right on top of each other, all huddled together," he said.
Aung Tin Oo and a few other men would creep out during the day to check on the situation and get rice to feed the community. Every day they lived in fear that a local villager would report their presence to the authorities.
Finally, the factory owner told them it was safe, and they should return to work. "We're still not sure when they will come back, but we were running out of money and getting unhealthy in the jungle," said Aung Tin Oo.
While the group was in hiding an unprecedented crackdown on illegal workers had gone on in Mae Sot. Hundreds of migrant workers fled across the Moei River. Local labor rights groups estimated nearly one thousand workers were arrested by local police.
At one factory, 200 women were taken directly from the factory to the detention center. Panic-stricken migrant workers raced into the jungle or into monasteries to hide.
"Every year the policemen carry out crackdowns, coming around the factories collecting money for the illegal workers," said Myo Zaw, a representative for the Yaung Chi Oo, a Burmese workers' association.
"In previous years, the factory owners could make deals with the police, but this time is different. They haven't been able to, and all they can do is close the factories and send their workers into hiding."
Myo Zaw said that he heard through sources in the Department of Employment (DOE) that police have been told they must arrest more than 500,000 illegal migrants every year.
He said that as a result of the Redshirt protests in Bangkok it might be possible that the police in Mae Sot were making up for fewer arrests in other parts of the country where police were too busy.
"It was such a big crackdown that the police might not come back, but we'll have to wait and see," said Myo Zaw.
Since the crackdown, the police have yet to come back and Mae Sot has seen a steady flow of workers coming out of hiding and returning to the factories that had closed.
However, as the last of the Redshirt protestors arrived back in their provinces on government-sponsored buses, many illegal migrant workers are concerned attention will once again focus on them.
Before the Redshirts began their encampment in central Bangkok, immigration officials threatened a crackdown in connection with the nationality verification registration deadline.
Commenting on the crackdown during the chaos in Bangkok, Ma Su, 24, a construction worker in Mae sot, said, "No one expected the crackdown to take place."
Now that things are back to normal in Bangkok, she said, "Thailand could be turned upside down" as the police hunt down illegal migrants and carry out the previously threatened crackdown.
Ma Su was one of the lucky migrants who was able to go through the Nationality Verification process before the deadline took place, and now she has a work permit and a migrant "passport," which enables her to travel freely around Thailand and be legally employed.
However, Ma Su is in the minority, one of 82,700 Burmese migrant workers who completed the national identification process out of 1.2 million workers from Burma, according to the Department of Employment. The majority of workers in Thailand, especially in Mae Sot, do not have work permits, let alone a worker passport.
Aung Tin Oo said he has never had a work permit and none of his employers have offered to help him get one. Most migrant workers still don't trust the process, he said, because they do not want the Burmese government to have records of their work in Thailand. Their biggest fear is that in the future, it will give the regime an easy way to tax their already low wages.
Many labor rights groups are quick to criticize the Nationality Verification scheme and the broker agencies which charged immigrants up to 10,000 baht ($300) to guide them through the process. The average migrant worker earns 80 baht [US $2.50] per day in a factory.
Rumors still circulate around the migrant worker community of mass arrests at the border and soldiers going to applicant's homes in Burma demanding money from their relatives for their illegal exit out of Burma. Whether the rumors are false or not, mistrust remains.
However, many thousands still apply and lines of people, clutching their documents, spilled out from the Thai-Myanmar Relations Office, which checks migrants' documents before they cross into Burma.
During June, the Ministry of Employment expects some 1,800 workers to undergo the process on a daily basis at the three Thai-Burma border checkpoints.
Waiting for his documents to be checked, Kyaw Oo told The Irrawaddy that he was lucky because his employer in Bangkok had organized his trip to Mae Sot. He said that he was excited to be able to travel freely around Thailand. Asked about a crackdown, he said, "Everyone knows it's coming, I am very lucky I will be legal."
According to the employment office, the majority of applicants have come from Bangkok where salaries are higher and employers are able to organize trips to the border.
For the Mae Sot-based workers, few employers have helped out, in fear perhaps that workers will leave their jobs in Mae Sot and travel to Bangkok if they are free to work legally and to travel.
Last month, the Department of Employment announced that the verification registration application deadine was over.
Andy Hall, a consultant to the Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF), said he believed Thailand is a more sensitive now to the issue of migrant workers since the UN Human Rights Rapporteur referenced the issue, and this could prevent a nationwide crackdown. The verification process should be reopened, he said.
"The main aim now is to reopen the registration so the rest of the migrant worker community can become legal, and we can put an end to the misery workers go through during the crackdowns," Hall said.
A large population of illegal migrant workers still lives in Thailand, and it will be affected by any pending crackdown. Workers will either be deported or hide out for weeks, while their jobs go unfilled in most cases.
Migrant labor representatives believe the government should be making it easier for migrant workers to stay in the country legally, because, they say, deportation violates a number of regional and international conventions and tramples on the basic rights of migrant workers.
See also:
 |