The
Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC)’s quick and effective respond to the fear
and desperation of the Cambodian migrant workers forced to cross the border
back to Cambodia by the Thai military is laudable and merited to be given a
thumb up. Let’s segregate things accordingly. The fact that they entered
Thailand illegally and hired by Thai legal businesses by hundreds
of thousands to look for a chance, an opportunity and a promise to earn income two
or three times higher than what they should have earned should they worked in
Cambodia against expected risks of exploitations and abuses is another thing.
On the other hand, the forced exodus of those migrant workers with their
families including young children culminating in the crossing back to their
homeland, a situation remotely expected by the RGC and the provincial
authorities bordering Thailand, had been handled appropriately, beyond the
thought and imagination of those poor souls and the people all across the
country. Cambodian soldiers and military
trucks took good care of the exhausted and frightened workers and help them get
back to their home provinces. Volunteers with the Cambodian Red Cross, Scouts
and youth groups have worked diligently to provide a steady supply of food and
water.
A sense of solidarity
and the extending of helping hands should have become an example across time
and space, and not only when misery and mistreatment by unkind and immoral
foreigners struck. As a result, a wake-up call forces the hands of the RGC to
facilitate the access of migrant workers to seek for status of documented
workers with an almost no cost to migrant workers to apply for passport and
requires only a twenty-day waiting period from the date of application. It is
hopeful that regional passport offices would be in the thinking process of the
RGC, as the free-flow of workers could be agreed upon and implemented when the
ASEAN Economic Community is established.
It
was a time when Thailand has allowed up to 200,000 Cambodian migrants to enter
Thailand and work illegally in agricultural and construction sectors, on
top of some 400,000 who received legal work permits from Thailand among the
more than 2 million documented migrant labourers working in Thailand. Cambodian
illegal migrant workers were taking immense risks expecting to earn some
money which they lost all hopes to earn enough at home in order to pull
themselves out of real poverty. Many migrants hope to earn enough to buy a used
motorbike that they will use as motodop or moto taxi, or to put a roof over
their head good enough to keep themselves cool when it is burning hot, dry when
it rains, or to save enough that they can pay the doctors when a child or an
old parent gets ill. There were stories about abuses by their employers who are
Thai legal business enterprises and owners. For these migrants their
lives, by destiny or by devious curses of their past lives follow the path of
cruel entrapment expressed by Cambodian folk proverb, saying: “In the water you
are the meal of the crocs, on dry land you are the feast of tigers, foraying
through forest you step on thorny branches, and coming to the market you had to
pay bribes to the police.” For them they have no ways out of poverty
that the United Nations had only defined in terms of economic poverty
and measured globally as earning less than one dollar and a half (US$1.50) a
day, which is unpractical and unreasonable for Cambodian poor who live in a
clustered society where rich and poor can see each other on the streets, in
towns, in the villages and where the pictures of income and wealth inequality
are observed with amazement by the poor and displayed extravagantly by the
rich. Sooner, there will be the Rolls Royce’s, the Porsche’s, the Lamborghini’s
cruising the narrow and busy streets of Phnom Penh. Four-Wheel drive and other
luxury vehicles have inundated showrooms and car sale lots thus satisfying the
search for comfort and the expression of individuality of a rising number of
successful business people, young professionals, and the off-springs of rich
families. All year long, rain or shine high-ranking government officials and
some or a majority of their staffs travelled to the provinces, districts,
communes and villages on weekends “to assist the local authorities,” or “to
strengthen the political bases”. Reasonably, they need reliable vehicles
for their busy schedules and their safety. Their trips and their physical
presence complement video conferences, official letters, instructions and
guidelines, and above all put them in contact with real people that they
serve. On the radius of zero to a few hundred kilometers, thousand pairs of
eyes from “the center” meet the realities of the lives of people they
serve, evaluate their needs, touch their heart, and probe their feeling that
made social researchers and analysts irrelevant. Supply-siders of Reagan years
(in the US) had their mantra which dominated all other economic thoughts of
that time: “High tide lifts all the boats, big and small,” could be true in
Cambodia, meaning that even poor Cambodians could enjoy larger and well to
extremely well paved and well maintained roads for the Rolls Royce’s, the
Porsche’s, the Lamborghini’s etc…
Thailand
had accepted illegal Cambodian migrant workers for their legal
businesses, if this is not the case, this would have been a systematic human
trafficking and exploitation of human beings of a grand scale that blinds Thai
authorities from the border-check points to the places of works. Economic benefits
for Thailand have been huge, but the risks for illegal Cambodian migrant
workers have been also on the rise. Uncertainties open wide the door for
limitless and even cruel and inhumane exploitations. For personal social and
economic reasons, illegal Cambodian migrant workers have agreed to the
so-called “normal exploitations” to the delight of some Thai people and legal
business organizations. Cambodian migrant workers had no choice. They had no
way out. A case in point, as written and published in The Nation, “the
Thai-Cambodian Border Trade and Tourism Association of Chanthaburi province has
predicted the Cambodian workers would return to Thailand within a few weeks
because Thai wages are at least three times higher than those in Cambodia.”
Less than a month, since the 22 May Thai military Coup d’Etat,
Cambodian migrant workers legal and illegal were the target of a political
cleansing by the Thailand’s military junta. There has been a plan in place,
namely:
(1) It
began with the political campaign saying “illegal labourers a threat
to Thailand,” eliminating all the goodness of the economic benefits reaped by
Thailand and the pledge of friendship cooperation and good-neighbourly relations
between Thailand and Cambodia.
(2) Then
there were reports, true or created, about the killings and beatings of
Cambodian migrant workers by Thai armed forces which are traditionally and
notoriously known to be mean and cruel beyond comprehension when dealing with
Cambodians. This creates fear for the worst that caused the “forced exodus”
of the Cambodian migrant workers.
(3) In
the meantime preparations were made by Thai Labor Ministry to move documented
workers from the pool of more than 2 million available workers to replace
Cambodian migrant workers.
(4) And
later on, a smoke-screen had been figured out by the National Council for Peace
and Order (NCPO) to confuse and manipulate the international opinion about “the
crackdown,” saying that “the crackdown was aimed not at individual workers but
at human trafficking to punish procuring persons, the employers and
benefit-reaping officials.”
NCPO, arbitrarily, targets Cambodian illegal labourers as a
(national security) threat to Thailand, not Thai human traffickers, not Thai
procuring persons, not Thai employers and benefit-reaping officials, as falsely
stated by NCPO. In hindsight, had the NCPO targeted the relatively less
vulnerable Thais who are the wrong-doers in comparison with the most vulnerable
Cambodian illegal migrant workers by honestly announcing and carrying out the
crackdown on Thai human traffickers, procuring persons, employers and
benefit-reaping officials, there would not have been the “forced exodus” of the
Cambodian illegal migrant workers back to Cambodia. The NCPO’s plan is
despicable. It is discriminatory. It defies civility. It is inhumane. Its
hypocrisies will never foul the international opinion.
It is
humanly proper for the NCPO to adequately and promptly express sincere apology
to those suffering migrant workers. Compensation should be another step to be
taken by the NCPO. Failure to do so is tantamount to shame, cruelty, and
disregard of human dignity.
June 23, 2014
Professor Pen Ngoeun
Advisor,
University of Puthisastra, Phnom Penh, Cambodia