If Thailand were in the Middle East it would currently make a very good fit for the headlines coming out of that troubled region. The political direction of the country has been trending the wrong way since at least 2006, when Thailand’s then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was forced out by the first unconstitutional change of government in fifteen years. The list of troubles is long: a long-serving but ailing monarch, a coup-prone army, an Islamist terrorist problem. Another, more recent entry is a blacklisting by the U.S. State Department over the reluctance of Thai authorities to crack down on the issue of forced migrant labor in its workforce. The bad publicity resulting from the recent discovery of mass graves on the Thai-Malaysian border has made global headlines and Thailand’s military government gives the impression it is struggling to address the issue substantively.
Human trafficking and the attendant exploitation of refugees and economic migrants long predates the current military regime in Thailand and is a serious governance issue. The Global Slavery Index places it near the top of its rankings for countries failing to combat slavery, at 44th out of 167 states for which data is available.
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