PHNOM PENH (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When hundreds of fishermen were rescued from a life of slavery on Thai fishing boats off the coast of Indonesia earlier this year, the world took notice.
Trafficked and sold to work on the boats, the men – mostly from Myanmar and Cambodia – had endured beatings, abuse and torture.
After they were freed, however, they had little support to help them recover from the horrors they had experienced.
“Everyone is shocked when they hear about the conditions on these fishing boats – but then what? No money is available to help them after they’ve been rescued,” said Lisa Rende Taylor, director of Project Issara, a public-private alliance to tackle trafficking in Southeast Asia’s supply chains.
Donor countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development allocate about $120 million each year to combat modern slavery – a sum dwarfed by the $150 billion in estimated profits each year from the human trafficking industry.
Governments and donors mostly fund support for women and girls trafficked for sex, but there is little money for male trafficking survivors, many of whom have suffered and witnessed extreme violence.
Trafficked fishermen are forced to work up to 20 hours a day, endure beatings and sexual assault, and have seen injured colleagues thrown overboard and left to drown, researchers have found.
Deprived of pay, those able to return home are penniless, making them feel worthless.
“Male survivors tend to feel a crushing sense of shame that they, as breadwinners, come back with nothing,” said Nicola Pocock, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
“A lot of them return to poor rural areas and find limited job opportunities, which is why they migrated in the first place,” said Pocock, who co-authored the largest ever study into the health of trafficking victims in Southeast Asia, published earlier this year.
The study found that 57 per cent of men trafficked for work on fishing boats and other forms of forced labour showed symptoms of depression, while 46 percent suffered from anxiety and 41 percent were affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.
After many years away, some trafficked men find their wives have remarried and their families have long assumed they had died because no money was ever sent home.
The welcome home may be mixed, said Mike Nowlin, of Hagar Cambodia, a charity that helps rescued Cambodian fishermen find work, deal with their trauma and reunite with their families.
“Often families don’t understand the horrific environment that the survivors were in, and are only aware that their family members were not sending money home as promised,” Nowlin said.
“They (the men) may be asked why they were away for three, five or 10 years and bring home nothing to support the family.”
Some choose not to go home at all for fear of rejection or because they may have been unable to contact their relatives.
