KING-OUA LAOHONG

The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) wants a regulation issued to enable it to automatically oversee all criminal investigations related to human trafficking rings. The DSI is awaiting cabinet approval for a ministerial regulation that will give it the power to handle human trafficking cases without having to request access to them, DSI spokesman Pol Col Narat Sawettanant said yesterday.

The department currently has to submit formal requests to the Special Cases Committee if it wants to take over the investigation of certain criminal cases.

If and when the regulation is passed, human trafficking inquiries will automatically fall under the DSI’s jurisdiction under the Anti-Human Trafficking Act _ set to come into effect on June 8.

The spokesman said the regulation will be appended to the Special Investigations Act which governs the DSI. The appendix is needed so that responsibility in handling human trafficking investigations will be recognised by the DSI’s own law.

The appendix does not require that the Special Investigations Act be amended.

Pol Col Narat said the DSI would not take over the investigation of the recent mass suffocation of Burmese job seekers in a cold-storage truck in Ranong. The department would only facilitate the police in dealing with criminal procedures.

The spokesman agreed with observations by some human rights advocates that it must first be established if a criminal case is of a human trafficking nature.

He said if foreign migrants slipped into the country voluntarily, they would not technically be considered human trafficking victims. They would be charged with illegal entry.

But if the migrants were lured into coming, abused or physically harmed in the course of being forced to work for any business, the case would be treated as a human trafficking offence.

National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) member Sunee Chaiyarose insisted that foreign migrants were all victims regardless of whether they were forced or lured to come or came willingly. They were entitled to protection under the international anti-human trafficking convention.

She said the NHRC and the Lawyers Council of Thailand have agreed on recommendations on ways to ease the plight of the 67 Burmese job seekers who survived the cold-storage truck tragedy.

She said the survivors, including 14 children, should not be deported back to Burma on Monday as earlier scheduled by the immigration police. They should instead be regarded as damaged parties and witnesses in the probe to find the traffickers who brought them to Thailand.

They will also be represented by the Lawyers Council representatives in filing legal action and seeking restitution from the traffickers.

She said a joint government-civic panel should be established to determine the compensation for the survivors.

The panel should also coordinate with the Central Institute of Forensic Science in analysing the DNA of 16 unidentified bodies found in the truck.