Thai authorities are still on the hunt for a fugitive police officer implicated in a trafficking case involving Cambodian men who were forced to work aboard Thai fishing boats. The officer’s victims included seven men rescued in Malaysia earlier in the year after escaping from slave labour on Thai fishing boats. Two Cambodian men who were told by a labour broker that they would be gardeners in Thailand were instead forced to work on Thai fishing boats.
On 7 December, Thai police and human rights activists rescued four women Burmese migrant workers from forced labour at a shrimp factory in southern Thailand. The four women were part of a group of 39 Burmese migrant workers who had been trafficked by Thai authorities after being in jail for 32 days for entering Thailand illegally in October. After being rescued, they were deported back to Burma.