YANGON —The death sentences handed down to two Myanmar migrant workers by a Thai court on Christmas Eve ignited widespread condemnation in Myanmar.
Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Htun, both 22, were convicted of the murder of British tourists David Miller and Hannah Witheridge on the Thai resort island of Koh Tao in September 2014. The police investigation and proceedings were widely criticized for serious shortcomings, including allegations of police torture to extract initial confessions which the Thai authorities refused to investigate seriously. Forensic experts from Thailand and Australia have raised serious questions about DNA evidence linked to the rape of Witheridge, on which the prosecution relied heavily. Defense lawyers have said they will appeal the decision.
The verdict sparked calls for a review of the case by senior officials in Myanmar, including by the military commander in chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and Myanmar’s ambassador in Bangkok. Protests in Myanmar quickly grew outside the Thai embassy in Yangon, where a petition of 25,000 signatures was presented last week, and at protests at major land border-crossings between the two countries. Anger at the verdict spread throughout social media, and the ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha staged anti-Thailand protests in Yangon.
Myanmar Migrants in Thailand
The case highlighted the poor treatment faced by over two million Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand. Thai police, government officials and employers have been implicated in a system of pervasive abuse that includes killings, beatings, human trafficking and mistreatment of workers in the offshore fishing industry, food processing factories, plantations and farms, garment and other light industry factories, and even the lucrative tourism sector. These abuses have been documented by Human Rights Watch and others for decades.
Problems in western Myanmar
But why in the midst of Myanmar’s “economic boom” are workers still migrating from Myanmar to work in dangerous conditions in Thailand? Abuses of labor rights and a lack of decent wages across many parts of Myanmar are partly responsible. Working conditions and opportunities are particularly dire in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, where the two convicted men hail from. The state has suffered more than most other areas under decades of military mismanagement and a dearth of basic social and community services.
Residents in Rakhine State see few jobs and other economic benefits trickle down from major oil and gas projects granted in the state to Chinese firms. At the same time as the Koh Tao verdict was being handed down, Myanmar’s parliament approved a massive special economic zone and deep-sea port of 4,000 acres in Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State for Chinese and Thai firms to develop, which does not auger well for the protection of worker’s rights, assuming there are jobs for local people in the project.
The international community has looked in anguish at the desperate plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslims leaving Myanmar and Bangladesh on rickety boats to Malaysia. But another dimension to the communal violence in Rakhine State is economically deprived Rakhine Buddhists are also prey for trafficking gangs and unscrupulous migrant worker brokers as they travel to Thailand for work and face abusive conditions. Many Rakhine nurse deep grievances towards the Bamar-dominated central state for the poverty produced by military rule.
Problems in northern and eastern Myanmar
Land grabs in eastern and northern Myanmar also continue to deprive rural families of their livelihoods, causing them to send their sons and daughters across the border to work. Increased landlessness and displacement due to natural resource extraction is generating rural unrest and protests against companies and the Myanmar military who are often implicated in these land grabs, as extensive research by Global Witness documented.
In visiting farming communities around Hpa-an in Kayin State in 2015, I frequently came across people in their twenties who had sought work in Thailand because of land grabs at home, often by state or military authorities who utilize unfair laws, bureaucratic opacity, and intimidation including arrests of critics, to avert compensation. Far from people returning from Thailand to take advantage of Myanmar’s opening, a new generation of people are heading east to earn a livelihood because their lives have either not improved or even worsened since the quasi-civilian government came to power in 2011.
Continued armed conflict in Shan State, which has displaced more than 10,000 civilians in recent months, is also causing many to flee and seek work in northern Thailand, joining tens of thousands of ethnic Shan who have fled these conflict zones since the 1980s. Despite the air of calm and talk of nationwide ceasefires, active armed conflict throughout Burma has increased since 2011, including intensive fighting in Kachin State that displaced over 130,000 civilians, providing another push factor for people inside Myanmar to migrate for work to its neighbors.
The Future
It is certainly understandable that many inside Myanmar are shocked at the Koh Tao murder case verdict and angry about the widespread mistreatment of migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand. But while correctly demanding that Thailand end its rights abuses against migrants, the incoming National League for Democracy government also needs to urgently address the structural inequalities and abuses that have driven people from Myanmar to work and live outside their country for many years. Myanmar can hardly be considered as a future economic treasure trove when the benefits of its natural resources and its growing economy are not shared broadly with the rural poor, whose livelihoods continue to be insecure.
By David Scott Mathieson
This article was originally published at www.myanmarnow.org
"David Scott Mathieson is a Senior Researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch. Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Myanmar Now."
