People smuggling rises

Smugglers resume overland trails

MAE SOT, Thailand, May 11, (RTRS): People smuggling across the border from Myanmar to Thailand is on the rise despite a crackdown by authorities in both countries that has made it more expensive and dangerous, Thai immigration police say.

Thailand said earlier this year that it hoped its efforts against smuggling would be recognised by the United States in its annual Trafficking in Persons report expected next month.

But while fewer migrants appear to be braving hazardous journeys by sea, figures from immigration police on the land border show an increase in people smuggled from Myanmar since 2014, when Thailand’s military government seized power and vowed to crack down on human smuggling and trafficking rings.

“We’ve applied a lot of pressure so they have to find a new way to come,” Sompong Saimonka, deputy superintendent of Border Immigration Police in Thailand’s western Tak province, the main land gateway from Myanmar, told Reuters. “We can’t keep tabs on it all.”

While Myanmar’s economy has been booming – the World Bank forecasts annual growth will average 7.1 percent over the next three years – wages remain among the lowest in the region.

Migrants from Myanmar often do work Thais shun in sectors such as construction, agriculture and fishing, forming the backbone of Southeast Asia’s second largest economy.

The two countries signed an agreement last year to allow migrants from Myanmar to legally work in Thailand. But many are unwilling to wait up to six months for identity documents and take their chance with the smugglers instead.

Thailand’s crackdown on human smuggling and trafficking syndicates reverberated around the region in 2015 and drew global attention to the abuses suffered by some of those seeking a better life.

Boatloads of migrants, many of them Rohingya Muslims escaping persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, were turned away by regional governments from Bangladesh to Malaysia after being abandoned at sea by smugglers.

Dozens of bodies of suspected migrants were discovered in jungle camps along the Thai-Malaysian border.

Thai police say the focus on sea routes to Thailand and Malaysia has prompted smugglers to resume overland trails where it is easier to avoid checkpoints.

Data from immigration police at Mae Sot, the main entry point into western Thailand, shows the number of people smuggled from Myanmar rose from 20,323 in 2014 to 24,962 in 2016.

Those were just the recorded cases, so the increase could partly be due to greater enforcement efforts. Few of those recently smuggled were Rohingya, police in Mae Sot said.