New Dam Helps Farmers Shake Off Poverty

ILLEGAL MIGRANTS: Driven by dreams of prosperity in another land, the hopes of illegal
migrant workers are often laid to waste in the real world

It's unlikely that you would have heard the story of Duangchan Yasri. Stories like hers are not often published, but they are all too common.

When she decided to leave her poverty-stricken life in the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai 27 years ago, Duangchan thought she had nothing to lose.

”At times we would have nothing to eat for days and no decent clothes to wear. I knew the situation would never improve if I didn't go to the city to get a job,” she says.

Duangchan was 16 when she tried her luck as a prostitute in Bangkok. An unlucky encounter with a couple of opportunistic agents in Bangkok brought her to a life as an illegal migrant waiting to be sold in Japan.

It was in the big city where I first met a couple of men who promised me and my friends a waitress job in Japan. They told me the only thing I had to do was talk to the customers.

”They said they would pay me 50,000 baht a month. It sounded good to me, especially because I saw it as a chance to get out of the prostitution business,” says Duangchan.

The agents said they would take care of all the necessary paperwork. They gave me a new identity: a new passport and a new name. The only thing I could recognise to be mine was my picture on the document.

She came to know how these brokers operate. When the women are not able to enter into Japan straight away, they are sent to another country, such as Malaysia or Singapore. After about a one-month stay, the women are then flown to Japan. The brokers arrange passports and visa's for each country they are sent to. “When we arrived there, the brokers immediately made clear how much money we owed them. They said they would kill us if we didn't pay them back or if we tried to flee,” she says.

Her story ended when she became pregnant at the age of 17 by a Japanese man. He said he would marry her, but when they returned to Thailand to get the necessary papers to apply for their daughter's Japanese citizenship, he fled the scene.

But Duangchan is one of the lucky ones. Now 43, she has a new life. She is happily married and has a legitimate job working for the Self-Empowerment Program of Migrant Women (SEPOM). This programme helps women who have returned home with traumatic experiences from living in Japan.

According to the SEPOM, Thai women working in the sex industry often fall into the underground trafficking business. Most of these women are sent to Japan by illegal agencies with the help of recruiters who operate in the local areas. The women are then passed on to brokers in Bangkok, brokers in Japan and then to those who have connections with the bars in Japan. SEPOM believes that these organisations are closely linked to the Yakuza, or Japanese mafia.

These women are tricked into becoming indebted to these nefarious organisations. The “debt”, which in some cases might add up to millions of yen (1 yen = 0.36 baht), is to pay the broker's fee for helping them enter Japan. They are forced into prostitution until they are able to pay back the unreasonably high amount they are charged.

A LONG, HARD ROAD

Leaving behind their land, their culture and their families, international migrant workers seek better prospects across the border. Regardless of the labels they are given by others, they become illegal migrants. Their quest for fortune is merely a means to send remittances back home, just another approach to put food on the table and pay for their children's basic education.

Sadly, these migrants find themselves facing a harsh reality before they have even crossed any borders, according to speakers at a recent 3-day seminar on Asian migration held in Bangkok. Sadder still, many of these migrant workers and professionals are encouraged, even recruited, to go to other countries.

According to a report submitted to the seminar by Migrants Right International, migrants are recruited by the hundreds of thousands to fill the dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs created by economic expansion.

The Asian Migrant Centre (AMC) and the Mekong Migration Network state that population movement and migration are primarily the cause of Asian countries' internal strife, repressive regimes, cross-border conflicts, recurring political instability and economic difficulties. Years of social upheaval have resulted in the decimation of large sections of the population in some strife-torn countries.

In Vietnam and Cambodia, vast tracts of agricultural land are still unusable due to land mines left from long decades of war. The effects of napalm bombings which destroyed factories and infrastructure are still felt, as the two countries try to integrate themselves into the international community.

Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Burma have been designated the least developed in Southeast Asia. In the past two decades, as the conflicts diminished, some of these countries increasingly engaged in development efforts to catch up with the rest of Asia. But the pace of development in these four countries still lags behind the more developed countries in the region, and this is one of the root causes of transmigration, which spawns even more social problems across the borders.

The six Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries _ Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and China (notably in the southern Yunnan province) _ have seen rampant trafficking of girls, women and boys for prostitution. According to the AMC, Thailand, Cambodia and some other countries have also been used as transit points for the trafficking of migrants to other parts of Asia and the world.

In this picture, Thailand represents the other end of the wealth disparity in the region. It has become a magnet for people fleeing turmoil or poverty in their own countries. Labour migration inflows and outflows, including trafficking, are increasing even among the poorer countries such as Cambodia.

Despite the fact that many countries remain dependent on migrant workers and professionals to fill gaps in job markets and maintain labour-intensive activity, these migrants have been blamed for rising unemployment, crime and a host of other social ills. And in times of economic instability or transition, these workers are subject to expulsion and greater abuse, which has become a global issue.

VIOLENCE IS INBORN

Violence against migrants is too common an occurrence. The expression of xenophobic and racist sentiments against migrants, refugees and other foreigners has entered mainstream political and public discourse not only in most Western industrialised states, but also in many countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

According to unofficial statistics, there are more than six million migrant workers in East and Southeast Asia, most of them women.

As they supply a considerable amount of the domestic workforce, they are sometimes victims of sexual violence under their employer's reign. Suffering in silence and constantly fearing deportation, they fail to report these crimes. Many don't get paid for months on end. Many are found jailed for stealing food or money.

”A couple of years ago the Bangladeshi government put out a ban on female migrant workers leaving the country, as a method to protect Bangladeshi women from being abused and assaulted by their employers during their stay abroad,” says Mohammed Masud Parvez from the Welfare Association of Repatriated Bangladeshi Employees (WARBE), who claims there is a suicide case among returning migrant workers every week in his country. These distraught women were unable to cope with the emotional and sometimes physical scars after returning home from a long stay abroad, he told the seminar.

Even when they are not physically abused, migrant workers often suffer greatly. A case in point is Taiwan, where foreign workers are allegedly treated as “robots”.

”It is the land of dreams and tears,” says Father Bruno Ciceri, a Catholic priest who heads the Stella Maris International Service Centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

According to Father Bruno, foreign workers in Taiwan are not considered to have any need for rest, freedom of religion, private space or simply just a day off.

The Taiwanese government is limiting migration by making sure workers are periodically sent home so they won't reside in the country for six years continuously, which would enable them to apply for Taiwanese citizenship, he told the seminar.

The Taiwanese government has no policy to accept legal immigrants, Father Bruno said, adding: The new trend in Taiwan is to import workers from Mongolia because of the government's diplomatic relationship with that country.

UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORT NEEDED

Masud Parvez from WARBE believes better understanding of the complexities surrounding the issue of migrant workers' families is also needed. Many of the migrant workers return home after having suffered psychological trauma from their work abroad, then find themselves alienated from their own families. Their own children call them uncle or aunt, and in some cases they find that their spouses have long since left to be with someone else.

Many of the migrants return suffering from a certain “superiority complex”. Unfamiliar with having so much money all at once, they are unable to maintain a stable financial plan and spend money like water, says Masud Parvez. Some end up selling their land in order to go abroad again.

”The community remains a pressure factor in this vicious circle, for the relatives and neighbours keep knocking on the door for money. The migrants are unable to decline as a matter of respect and gratitude,” he says.

A way to deal with this issue is to provide “pre-departure” services and orientation to migrant workers and their families, he suggests.

The workers are generally unaware of what really goes on in the countries they are about to enter. Despite the fact that communication is much easier nowadays with the Internet, quick mobile phone text messaging, a drop in call rates throughout the world and cable TV, these forms of contact remain a luxury for most migrants. Governments need to make access to information a lot more easier and cheaper, says Masud Parvez.

Participants at the seminar agreed that families of migrant workers need to know what they can expect when their kin returns home. They might come back with no money at all. They might be terminally ill or in the worst case scenario sent home in a coffin.

Governments in both sending and receiving countries, as well as the media, should pay more attention to the situation of migrants. Talks and legislation are meaningless if there is no governing body or authority to uphold them.

Many migrants today are undocumented and, therefore, have no legal protection. Governments should take the responsibility to seek documented status for migrants. Each country has their own policy on illegal migrants, but they have the obligation to ensure protection of fundamental human rights to all persons in their territories, regardless of status, the seminar was told.

There are very few stories like Duangchan's with a happy ending. The problems of illegal migrants are complex and they transcend all borders. We can't close our eyes and deny their existence.
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Between the headlines

A lack of media coverage contributes to the public's indifference to the problems of migrant workers

“Migrants come to face larger problems than they are able to cope with,” says Dr. Michael Tan, chair of the Anthropology Department of the University of the Philippines. The emphasis has always been on the problems, but almost never on how the migrant workers are coping with them. So how are they supposed to fend for themselves with weak or non-existent services to information?

The media and NGOs working within this field say it is almost an impossible task to help these workers if proper media coverage will not shed any light on the issue.

The problem is that print journalists from many Asian countries must deal with editors that simply can't be bothered with write-ups about migrants any more. “I find it almost impossible to get my articles through to our readers,” Kim-Kyna Tan of MediaCorp Press Ltd in Singapore told the Bangkok seminar on migrant workers. “Media censorship continues to prohibit journalists from reporting about the hardships migrants are facing.”

Some NGOs criticise the media for having poor judgement when it comes to prioritising their news budgets. The need for the press to take social accountability is increasing, they note.

How should NGOs present these kinds of stories to the media so that they become interested in writing about them?

”The press should provide a forum to work out various strategies in order to force a change in government policies. It should play a watchdog role to ensure that policies are upheld by the government,” says Deep Ranjani Rai, international coordinator for the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW).

But Rajshri Dasgupta of Himal magazine in India disagrees.

”The media cannot serve as a forum. Newspapers have the mere purpose to report the truth. Facing reality, besides having a commercial interest, the newspaper's allegiance lies with the readers and not with NGO interests,” she told the seminar.

Ashish Bose of the Jawarhalal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, said most of the time the media is simply suffering from compassion fatigue. He said migration is a political and social issue and a more effective approach would be to promote talks about development.

Others believe media prejudice is also to blame.

”The Thai media are biased in their reporting on, for instance, Burmese migrants,” says Sanitsuda Ekachai, assistant editor for Bangkok Post.

”Ethnic discrimination and prejudice are common in media coverage on migrant workers. The message that is sent out is that the Burmese pose a threat in taking over the Thai society. So instead of clarifying the situation, the media can sometimes make things worse,” she adds.

Sanitsuda feels that reports which look with compassion on Burmese migrants do get some attention, but it is insufficient to address the problems that migrants are facing.
”Even the media need some encouraging sometimes. We could use the help of NGOs to inform us about what's going on in the world, or even in our own countries for that matter,” she adds.