Adaptations and Resiliencies of Slavery Practices in Thailand and Burma
Writing about modern slavery brings ethic, religious, political and economic questions. Traditional slavery is complex because it can be a form of « willing slavery », today as much as yesterday. This is one of the reasons why slavery can be described as an « extreme form of dependence » (Condominas 1998). Southeast Asia had been historically subject to the colonisation of territories as the result of conflicts between Nation-States in formation which, in order to colonize new lands, put the submitted populations into slavery. Other forms of slavery existed : slaves’ obedience to their landlords or to the person they were in debt bondage with, for instance. Debt bondage can be defined today as one of the most important forms of slavery. On the one hand, authorities, even with their best efforts, cannot eradicate this problem, which is culturally anchored ; and in the other hand, the local economies need these slave-workers to be competitive, and even fetch them in neighbouring countries such as Cambodia or Burma. The paradox is obvious. How can slavery be supressed if the economy is so dependent on slavery ? The dialogue is hence difficult between the United States and the Thai Kingdom, for instance, which makes real efforts to control human trafficking, with mixed results only. That is the reason why Thailand is still inscribed in the infamous Tier 3 category of the ASEAN classification of countries. Even though NGOs, researches, investing committees and sanctions (such as the « yellow card » given by Europe concerning Thailand’s sea production because of the unclear status of workers) take relevant actions, they cannot put an end to the ancient practices inscribed in the nepotic culture of Southeast Asia. Only mass education and a step-by-step approach, combined with a massive redistribution of wealth, will hopefully help to eradicate what is considered as one of the pillars of Southeast Asian archaism.