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You will know what the situation is going on in Laos.

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The ins and outs of leaving Laos
By Clifford McCoy
 


VIENTIANE - State-sanctioned tourism literature would have foreign visitors believe that your average Lao chooses to live a laid-back life surrounded by their beautiful temples, tall, verdant mountains, and colorful hill tribes. But the growing number of Lao migrating from their villages to bigger towns and cities and on to Thailand seeking work either to support their families or in pursuit of the accoutrements of more modern living puts the lie to this idyllic image.

Somnolent, communist-run Laos has in recent years slowly but surely opened its once hermetically sealed economy to the outside world. That loosening, combined with the country's 

crushing poverty, has provided a wide new opening for the region's human-trafficking syndicates to integrate Laos into their illicit trade. According to the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Subregion, Laos is a source, transit and destination country for human-smuggling rings.

The UN ranks Laos as a least developed country, with an average per capita income of US$460 per year as of 2004. At the same time, the population is bombarded by images of the comparative affluence in neighboring Thailand through television and radio programs (the Lao language is a dialect of Thai). The younger generation is less content to work in rice fields and would rather seek more gainful employment in Thailand's factories, construction sites, entertainment venues and even its sex industry. Although the main push factor is the lack of jobs at home, migration experts also note that growing materialism among the younger generation of Lao is also driving the trend.

The majority of Lao cross the border to Thailand, where there is a better economy, although a small number of Lao women are also being trafficked north into China as purchased brides. Growing flows of Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer and even North Koreans, some voluntary, many duped by false promises of gainful employment in a second country, now pass through Laos to Thailand or further afield. At the same time, an increasing number of Chinese and Vietnamese are arriving and staying in Laos, making it a new destination country, experts monitoring the migration patterns say.

Hard statistics on the actual number of people trafficked into, through and out of Laos are difficult to come by, with porous and inadequately monitored borders making an accurate count nearly impossible. Trafficking researchers in Laos say that even if the government has statistics, it is not willing to release them publicly. The only available figures are for officially repatriated trafficking victims, which reached 951 in 2005. Researchers caution that although the number of returnees from Thailand has grown statistically in recent years, the trend may be misleading, since it more likely reflects an increased number of people leaving shelters for trafficking victims after their rehabilitation.

Thailand is by far the largest destination country for Lao migrants. The northeast is culturally, ethnically and linguistically the same as Laos, and many Lao have family members living across the border, allowing migrants easily to blend in and use established networks. In general, there are five main Laos-to-Thailand trafficking routes: Huay Xai-Chiang Khong, Vientiane-Nong Khai, Tha Khek-Nakhon Phanom, Savannakhet-Mukdahan, and Pakse-Ubon Ratchathani. According to one organization working on the human-trafficking issue in Laos that requested anonymity, most come from Savannakhet, with Vientiane a close second.

Vulnerable to gangs
Most Lao seek work in Thailand voluntarily, but the illegal nature of their migration makes them vulnerable to human-trafficking gangs. It is common along the border for Lao to cross over in the morning to work as seasonal laborers on farms or as day workers in markets and shops and return to their homes in Laos in the evening. Other Lao travel further inside Thailand to seek work in Bangkok and other major cities.

For this, many seek the aid of job brokers, some scrupulous, many not. These middlemen, who are the contact persons for networks of employers, can be found at all the major crossing points, some low-key and others operating out of shophouses as formal employment agencies. For a fee, which often includes a finder's fee for the broker and transportation, the brokers arrange jobs for Lao migrants, which the individual worker must pay back over a set period of time.

Local trafficking networks inside Laos are still mostly unorganized and informally run. Much of the trade consists of informal networks, often family members, friends or fellow villagers who have gone abroad to work before and have maintained connections. On this level, the arrangement of employment is done individually, often as a personal business. Once across the border in Thailand, however, the human-trafficking connections are very structured and well organized.

The family members or friends who say they can arrange employment are often tied into these networks, even if they are not formal members themselves. Once they have persuaded a Lao to seek work abroad, that person, often a young woman or under-age girl, is literally sold to the network, with the broker receiving a finder's fee.

The majority of men find work in the fishing and construction industries, in factories and in sugarcane and rubber plantations, while the women most commonly work as domestic help, in factories, on plantations or in restaurants, and also as sex workers. Articles in the Thai and Lao media and reports by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) monitoring the trend describe how newly arrived Lao migrants are often tricked with promises of well-paid work on plantations or in restaurants, but upon landing in Thailand instead find themselves working as bonded labor.

Lao men are sometimes forced to serve on fishing trawlers, where they work long hours in deplorable conditions, sometimes not being allowed to return to shore for months. Lao women frequently find themselves sold to brothel or massage-parlor owners, who often force them to service numerous customers each day to pay off their broker fee, which in some instances takes years to repay fully.

Many Thai employers are eager to employ Lao - even if they are illegal migrants - to make up for worker shortages, especially in labor-intensive and dangerous work, including on rubber plantations and construction sites. They are able to pay the Lao workers less than the minimum wage and in many cases subjugate them to unsafe work conditions and long hours that Thai workers refuse to endure. But for many Lao, the money they make in Thailand is exponentially more than they could earn at home.

Lao out, Chinese in
While Lao are in growing numbers leaving their country, Laos is increasingly a transit and destination country for migrant workers from China and Vietnam. Overcrowding in Vietnam and lack of employment opportunities in China are cited by migration experts as the major reasons for the migration trend. Many of the Chinese and Vietnamese see their migration to Laos as permanent, but many others pass through on their way to seek jobs in Thailand and elsewhere, they say.

One telling example is the thousands of Chinese who have come to work on the Asian Development Bank-funded Route 3 in northern Laos that runs from the Chinese border, through the Laotian town of Luang Nam Tha, and down to the Thai border. Many of the workers have stayed on and opened shops or found other work after their construction contracts ended.

Laos has also become a destination for Chinese and Vietnamese women who are trafficked into brothels there, especially along Route 3 connecting China with Laos and Thailand, along Route 9 connecting Vietnam with Laos and Thailand, and around the Nam Thuen hydropower project in central Laos. These routes and the hydropower project are part of the Asian Development Bank's Greater Mekong Subregion plan, and the mushrooming brothels reportedly cater to the construction workers working on the projects.

Ironically, perhaps, while the bank's plan is aimed at creating better trade links among China, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, it will also create a more efficient route for the trafficking of people and illicit goods among the four countries. Migration experts believe that Laos, in the middle of this emerging road network, will increasingly find itself used as a transit country by smugglers, including human-traffickers.

While the trafficking of Lao into Thailand has received attention in the local and international media and has been raised in international forums, less documented is the sizable amount of human trafficking within the country. The Laotian government is in denial about the issue, again making accurate research difficult and reliable figures nearly impossible to come by. However, organizations working with migrant workers and women and children in Laos say the problem is increasing, with the majority being young women and girls.

Most of the young workers come from the rural provinces to find work in the cities, especially Vientiane and Savannakhet. Because many of the girls feel it is their duty to earn money to send back to their families, they are often willing to take almost any paid job. Some of the women find work as domestic helpers or factory workers, but many others enter Laos' discreet but growing sex industry.

This most commonly takes the form of the beer halls, where girls sell certain beer brands to customers. Some establishments force the women to sleep with customers, though the practice is not universal. Although prostitution is technically illegal in Laos, somehow the beer halls offering sexual services, the brothels and the karaoke parlors stay open.

Changing attitudes
Historically, the Laotian government has tacitly ignored the issue of human trafficking by maintaining a policy of detaining and fining all returning workers whether they traveled abroad to work voluntarily or were victims of human-trafficking rings. Since 2001, the government has reportedly taken a new interest in the issue. The United States' 2007 Human Trafficking Report noted the improved efforts of the Laotian government to create awareness, promulgate laws, and increase enforcement of existing laws. This assessment has been echoed by certain other researchers and NGO workers inside Laos.

Laos has joined the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking (COMMIT) in its efforts to combat human smuggling. This grouping of the six member countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion - China, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos - was created specifically to formulate regional plans and foster cooperation on human-trafficking issues, and the process is slated for review at a meeting in Beijing in December.

Recognizing that it would be hard pressed to stop its citizens seeking more lucrative work in Thailand, the Laotian government has supported a campaign to make prospective migrant workers more aware of the issues and dangers involved. The government encourages "safer migration" through a campaign consisting of putting up posters explaining possible dangers and distributing contact cards with emergency numbers. The deputy prime minister was recently appointed chairman of a governmental committee on human trafficking and named the secretary of the COMMIT task force on human trafficking in Laos.

Meanwhile, researchers on human trafficking in Laos have expressed some satisfaction with the government's attempts to enact laws to protect workers from trafficking rings, including new provisions to punish people involved in the trade. In that direction, a law on women was enacted in 2004, and last year similar legislation aimed at protecting children was also put in place. The Development and Protection of Women and Children Law has recently been expanded to include men as well.

Although the Laotian government has shown a new willingness to tackle human-traffickers, at least on a policy level, on the ground much still needs to be done. Public-awareness campaigns have no doubt made many Lao more aware of the dangers involved in seeking work in Thailand, but the lack of employment opportunities and grinding poverty at home still make working abroad attractive. Only an improved economy with better work opportunities and higher wages will encourage Lao to stay put - a distant prospect at this point.

Meanwhile, Laotian police are still underpaid and responsible for covering a long, mountainous, and often remote border with limited manpower and resources. On the local level, especially in more remote areas outside the capital Vientiane where central control is weaker, the lure of easy money through bribes or even direct involvement in the trade provides hard-to-resist economic incentive for public officials keen to supplement their meager salaries. The recent US trafficking document noted that although it had received word of local government and police profiting from trafficking, it had received no reports of government investigations into the allegations.

As Laos becomes increasingly integrated into Asian trade networks and with its limited financial resources, the country seems destined to become an increasingly important transit and source country for smugglers, including human-traffickers. Higher profits earned from the trade, history shows, will likely translate into a more formalized and organized trafficking structure, more efficient transportation networks and, of course, more opportunities for official corruption.

Clifford McCoy is a Chiang Mai-based freelance journalist.
source: http://www.atimes.com/