‘Death Ships’ Case Highlights Plight of Vulnerable Workers

by James Parks, Jul 23, 2007

A survivor of the Thai ‘Death Ships’ signs the lawsuit against the boats’ owners.

John Hosinski of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center sends us this report about the center’s efforts to assist Burmese and Thai fishermen who had been kept at sea for three years without adequate food. Many died of starvation and their bodies were tossed overboard.

When 70 Thai and Burmese fishermen signed up for duty aboard a six-boat fleet of Thai fishing trawlers in July 2003, none thought the journey would end in a nightmare for all of them and death for many. But over the next three years, they were trapped at sea with inadequate supplies. Thirty-nine of the men slowly starved to death and the rest barely clung to life.

While some workers jumped into the sea, taking their own lives instead of enduring any more suffering, those who died onboard were simply tossed overboard. Returning to port some three years after setting sail, the survivors claim the boats’ owners—Thai-based Prapasnavee company—only offered to pay them about $93 when they were owed thousands of dollars.

The surviving crew members refused the $93 buyout and fought back. With support from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, the Lawyers Council of Thailand, the Seafarers’ Union of Burma and the Thailand Labor Rights Promotion Network, the survivors and victims’ families sued the boat owners, demanding back wages and damages of about $500,000. Thai authorities have begun a criminal investigation—initially charging the boat owners with criminal disposal of evidence for dumping the dead overboard and now are considering bringing new charges under Thailand’s anti-slavery statutes. 

With the help of the Solidarity Center office in Bangkok, the workers are telling the story of their horrific voyage and are setting legal precedents by fighting for justice—taking the story of the “Death Ships” before Thai courts and shining a light on widespread abuse of workers’ and migrants’ rights in Thailand.

When the U.S. State Department released its 2007 Trafficking in Persons report last month, it dedicated the report to Ko Maung, one of the workers who died aboard the ships. According to the report:

Workers made repeated requests to leave the boats, but were denied. They requested medical attention but were ignored…They were used in forced labor until they could breathe no more.  Those who survived were not paid for their work—which amounted to three years of enslavement.

The International Labor Organization, an arm of the United Nations, estimates at any given time there are 12.3 million people in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor and sexual servitude. The “Death Ships” case is just one example of how workers are trapped and abused and then simply forgotten once they are no long needed. In particular, the case casts light on the widespread system of worker exploitation, particularly of undocumented Burmese migrants, in Thailand’s fishing and seafood industry. Fleeing political violence and poverty in their home country, Burmese migrants are particularly vulnerable to exploitation when they seek work overseas. In Thailand, where these migrants find work but are often treated with suspicion, it’s extremely rare for migrant workers to take legal action and this case has the potential to break new legal ground.

Here’s how the story unfolds. Ko Maung and more than 70 Burmese migrants and native Thais signed up in July 2003 to work on six deep-water trawlers from the Thai-owned Prapasnavee company. Conditions on the trawlers are cramped, the boats are at sea for months and 14–20 hour shifts not uncommon. But the company’s offer of 5,000 baht ($156) per month plus a share of the catch was nearly impossible for the impoverished men to turn down. While most of the men understood they would be gone for more than a year, others only signed up for a few months. Setting out with permits to fish in water in neighboring Indonesia, the boats fished for the next three years, with smaller company supply boats regularly replenishing food and water while hauling away the catch to allow the boats to begin another 45-day trawling run.

When the Indonesian permits for the boats expired, the boats were stranded in legal limbo at sea, unable to continue fishing or dock in an Indonesian port for supplies. Surviving crew members allege that this is when the boat owners started reducing the flow of fresh water, food and supplies being brought in by the supply ships. Workers who requested to return on the supply ships were not allowed—effectively trapping the crew. After months of holding off Indonesian police and with inadequate food and water, the crew started getting sick.  

Many crew members experienced horrifying symptoms like bloating, bleeding from the mouth and rectum, vomiting and severe emotional disturbances. According to one of the survivors:

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