Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/pc/text/humanrts/thailand.txu

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TITLE:  THAILAND HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995



Section 3  Respect for Political Rights:  The Right of Citizens
           to Change Their Government

The democratically elected coalition government was generally
successful in its efforts to strengthen democratic
institutions.  The military's role in politics has
significantly declined since the 1992 elections, and the Thai
military now seems increasingly supportive of the civilian
government and democracy.

While there are no legal restrictions on political
participation, women are generally underrepresented in national
politics, especially at the senior levels.  Also, the army
still prohibits women from becoming generals, and women are not
allowed to attend military academies or the Army General Staff
College.  However, the number of women in local and national
politics continued to increase.  In February more than 400
women were promoted to the post of assistant district chief, a
steppingstone to more powerful positions such as provincial
governor.  In September a woman was appointed Secretary General
of a major political party for the first time in Thai history.
The current parliamentary contingent of 16 female Members of
Parliament in the lower house (out of 360) is the largest to
date.

No laws prohibit the participation of ethnic minorities, but
few hold positions of authority in national politics or the
civil service.  Ethnic minorities in the north often lack
documentation of Thai citizenship, effectively barring their
participation in the political process (see Section 5).
Muslims from southern Thailand hold significant posts in the
Government.

Section 4  Governmental Attitude Regarding International and
           Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations
           of Human Rights

Local human rights organizations operate without government
restriction.  International human rights NGO's generally work
freely in Thailand on controversial issues.  Although the
Government sometimes criticizes these groups for being
politically motivated and biased, it generally has neither
penalized nor suppressed human rights observers.  However,
NGO's working with displaced Burmese have had problems in their
relations with the Government (see Section 2.d.).

When a locally supported regional NGO umbrella group planned a
human rights conference (to discuss human rights problems in
Burma and East Timor) to coincide with the ASEAN Ministerial
Meetings in Bangkok in July, the Government, to avoid
repercussions from other governments, sought to prevent the
conference by invoking a little-used 1987 permit requirement
for foreign participation at NGO conferences.  To further limit
foreign participation, the Government "blacklisted" 11 East
Timorese dissidents, preventing them from entering the country,
and deported one Australian NGO representative after claiming
she was in the country illegally.  The Labor Ministry pressured
potential conference sites into refusing the NGO group access
to a meeting room.  Once human rights lawyers protested the
Government's action, calling into question the legality of the
permit regulation, the Government allowed the conference to
take place, albeit with limited participation.

Section 5  Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion,
           Disability, Language, or Social Status

     Women

Women generally have equal legal rights, but inequalities
remain in domestic law.  Whereas a man may sue for divorce on
the grounds that his wife has committed adultery, a woman faces
the additional legal burden of proving her husband has
maintained or honored another woman in a manner equal to his
wife.

Reliable statistics indicate that domestic abuse is rising and
crosses all social classes.  One NGO estimates that as many as
50 percent of women in Bangkok's slum areas are victims of
abuse.  Police do not enforce laws against such violence
vigorously, and domestic violence often goes unreported.  Under
the Criminal Code, spousal and child abuse is covered under
assault provisions, but rules of evidence often make
prosecuting such cases difficult.  Early in the year police
began to use a female team to handle rape and abuse cases to
encourage more victims to report these abuses.

Prostitution, although illegal, flourishes and is deeply
ingrained.  Estimates of the numbers of women and children
engaged in prostitution vary widely because of temporary sex
workers and the migratory nature of prostitution.  However,
reliable NGO statistics generally discount the Government's
claim that there are 70,000 prostitutes in Thailand; most
estimate the number closer to 250,000.

Prostitution exposes women to a number of human rights abuses,
as well as a high risk of contracting AIDS.  Some women are
forced into prostitution, although the number of such cases is
unknown.  Human rights monitors believe that the majority who
engage in prostitution are not kept under physical constraint,
but they note that many women become indebted to brothel owners
for large sums.  It is common for brothel procurers to advance
parents a substantial sum against their daughter's future
earnings, often without the consent of the young woman
involved.  The women are then obligated to work in a brothel
for a fixed period of time in order to pay back the loan.

In the past several years, there has been an increase in the
number of women entering Thailand from neighboring countries to
work as prostitutes, and there were continuing credible reports
of corrupt police involvement in illegal trafficking schemes.

Incidents of coerced prostitution most commonly involve women
from hill tribes or neighboring countries.  Brothel operators
reportedly favor such women because they are cheaper to procure
and their inability to speak Thai makes them easier to
control.  Sometimes lured with promises of jobs as waitresses
or domestics, these women are then often threatened with
physical abuse by brothel operators if they refuse to work as
prostitutes.  Because they are considered illegal immigrants,
such women have no right to legal counsel or health care if
arrested.

The Government has set up vocational training and education
programs to combat the lure of prostitution, but despite
occasional high-profile raids on brothels, it has failed
effectively to enforce laws against prostitution, and in many
cases, brothels pay off local government representatives and
police.  There are credible reports of instances in which
corrupt police drove Burmese women across the border sometimes
in police vehicles and delivered them directly to brothels.

Under the current Penal Code, prostitutes are considered
criminals, whereas brothel owners, procurers, and clients are
not subject to criminal statutes.  In May the Cabinet approved
draft legislation that would further criminalize those involved
in the trafficking of women and children for the purpose of
prostitution or slave labor.  While clients of child
prostitutes would be subject to criminal prosecution under the
legislation, it still would not criminalize the clients of
adult prostitutes.  At year's end, the draft legislation was
scheduled for parliamentary debate in May 1995.

Statistics compiled by NGO's concerned with women's issues note
that women represent half of the economically active population
and their numbers have increased in professional positions.
Government regulations require employers to pay the same wages
and benefits for similar work regardless of sex.  However,
two-thirds of female workers do not earn the minimum wage, and
there is a significant gap between average salaries earned by
men and women as a result of the concentration of women in
traditionally lower paying jobs.

NGO's concerned with the status of women have pressed the
Government to abolish discriminatory practices within the civil
service.  Constitutional amendments passed in early 1995
included a new provision, Article 24, stipulating the equality
of men and women.

     Children

Abuse of children in prostitution and child labor continued.
Although the Government claims to be committed to eliminating
child prostitution, it has failed to enforce the current
limited laws against child prostitution.  In 1994 the
Government established a special police task force to suppress
child prostitution, and the Cabinet approved draft legislation
that would revise the Criminal Code to toughen the laws
regarding abuse of children under 18 years of age.  Reliable
NGO's report that police are often unwilling to raid a brothel
that has child prostitutes unless the NGO can provide the
children's names, due to the problem of false identity cards
with incorrect birth years.  The police then will only remove
those children named before the raid.  There are no reliable
statistics on the number of children involved in the sex
industry.

Children are particular victims of the AIDS epidemic.  There
are indications that the demand for child prostitutes may be
growing as patrons believe that older prostitutes are more
likely to be infected with HIV.  There is a small, but rapidly
growing, number of babies born to HIV-infected mothers.
Approximately 30 percent of these children will be infected and
die within a few years.  Those who are not infected themselves
will be orphaned while still in childhood, and are often
discriminated against as an extension of the social stigma
directed against their parents.

The Criminal Code provides for the protection of children from
abuse, and laws on rape and abandonment provide for harsher
penalties when the victim is a child.  As in the case of
domestic violence against women, police are often reluctant to
pursue abuse cases, and rules of evidence make prosecution of
child abuse cases difficult.

     National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Progress in integrating ethnic minorities into Thai society is
limited.  Only half of the estimated 500,000 to 700,000 members
of hill tribes reportedly possess documentation as citizens,
which prevents them from exercising their basic rights,
including participation in the political process.  Undocumented
hill tribe people cannot own land, have limited access to
educational opportunities, and are not subject to labor laws,
including minimum wage requirements.

Approximately 45,000 Vietnamese who fled Indochina in the
1940's and 1950's reside in northeastern Thailand and live
under a set of laws and regulations restricting their
movements, residences, education, and occupations.  The
Government has slowly pursued a more lenient policy toward
longtime Vietnamese residents in recent years.  Noncitizen
Chinese and their descendants who live in border areas must
seek permission from local authorities to travel.

     Religious Minorities

Muslims represent a significant minority within Thailand as a
whole and constitute the majority in the four southernmost
provinces that border Malaysia.  Although the Government has
attempted to integrate the Muslim community into Thai society
through developmental efforts and expanded educational
opportunities, societal discrimination remains widespread.
The number of incidents of political violence--typically
involving few, if any, casualties--decreased from 1993.  While
security officials have attributed a number of those incidents
to the Islamic Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO)
separatist group, informed observers believe much of the
violence in the South has been perpetrated by opponents of the
Government in an effort to weaken the Government.  Occasional
ambushes of security forces by suspected guerrillas, and
counteroperations by military units, also occur in remote areas
in southern Thailand's Muslim provinces.

     People with Disabilities

The Government again took few steps to implement provisions in
the Disabled Rehabilitation Law that established a quota system
and employer incentives for hiring the disabled.  Another
regulation requiring factories to hire one handicapped person
for every 200 nonhandicapped employees was also not enforced.
There are no laws mandating access to public facilities for
disabled persons.

Section 6  Worker Rights

     a.  The Right of Association

There were no significant changes in the general labor
environment, either in terms of new legal initiatives or labor
unrest.

The law grants freedom of association only to private sector
workers.  Workers also have the right to form and join unions
of their own choosing without prior authorization; to decide on
the constitutions and rules of these associations and unions;
to express their views without government or employer
interference; to confederate with other unions; to receive
protection from discrimination, dissolution, suspension, or
termination by any outside authority because of union
activities; and to have employee representation in direct
negotiations with employers.  However, no law explicitly
protects workers from discrimination due to their participation
in organizing new unions that have not yet been officially
registered.  Union leaders report that employers do
discriminate against workers seeking to organize unions.

In place of unions, the law allows workers in each state
enterprise to form a single "association" after at least 30
percent of the enterprise's employees submit a petition to the
Ministry of Labor to register such association.  These
associations submit employee grievances to management and
propose changes in benefits and working conditions, but may not
negotiate wages.  Associations do not have the right to
confederate or to join private sector federations.  Unofficial
contacts between public and private sector unions continue,
however, and the Government has not interfered with these
relationships.  A number of associations maintain affiliations
their predecessor unions had with international labor
organizations.

The law denies all state enterprise workers the right to
strike.  In the private sector, a proposed strike must be
approved by a majority of the union members in a secret ballot.

In 1991 the International Labor Organization (ILO) criticized
labor law amendments adopted in March 1991 that dissolved state
enterprise unions, transferred their assets, limited the number
of associations which may be formed in each state enterprise,
set unusually high minimum membership requirements for
associations, denied associations the right to affiliate with
private sector unions, and completely forbade strikes in state
enterprises.  The Government has not vigorously enforced these
restrictions.  The ILO continues to request that the Government
rescind or revise the law.  The Government has pending a new
version of the law that would restore for the most part the
rights enjoyed by state enterprise workers prior to the 1991
changes.  It was approved by the Cabinet in December 1993 and
passed its first reading in Parliament on September 28.

The Government has the authority to restrict private sector
strikes that would "affect national security or cause severe
negative repercussions for the population at large."  The
Government seldom invokes this provision and did not do so in
1994.  Labor law also forbids strikes in "essential services,"
defined much more broadly than the ILO criteria for such
services.  No strikes were disapproved on those grounds in
1994.  The number of approved strikes has averaged fewer than
10 annually for the past 15 years; there were 3 in the first 8
months of 1994.

Over half of the work force is employed in the unorganized
agricultural sector.  Less than 2 percent of the total work
force, though nearly 11 percent of industrial workers is
unionized.  Cultural traditions and unfamiliarity with the
concept of industrial relations are often cited as the reason
for low rates of labor organization.

While violence against labor leaders is rare, the 1991
mysterious disappearance of outspoken labor leader Thanong
Po-an remains unsolved.

There is a legacy of corrupt public sector union leaders who
were exploited by the military, politicians, or employers for
their own purposes, but private unions generally operate
independently of the Government and other outside
organizations.  Unions are free to associate internationally
with other trade union organizations, and they maintain a wide
variety of such affiliations.

     b.  The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

The 1975 Labor Relations Act recognizes the right to organize
and bargain collectively for private sector workers and defines
the mechanisms for such negotiations and for
government-assisted conciliation and arbitration in cases under
dispute.  In practice, genuine collective bargaining probably
occurs only in 10 to 20 percent of workplaces and in most
instances continues to be characterized by autocratic attitudes
on the part of employers.

The Government sets wages for both civil servants and state
enterprise employees.  A system of labor courts created in 1980
exercises judicial review over most aspects of labor law for
the private sector.  Workers may also seek redress for their
grievances from a tripartite Labor Relations Committee.
Redress of grievances for state enterprise workers is handled
by a State Enterprise Labor Relations Committee.  Labor leaders
did not indicate dissatisfaction with the treatment their
concerns receive in these forums.

No separate labor legislation applies to export processing
zones, where wages and working conditions often are better than
national norms because of the preponderance of multinational
firms.

     c.  Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The Constitution prohibits forced or compulsory labor, except
in the case of national emergency, war, or martial law.
However, there are reports of sweatshops in the informal sector
that physically restrain workers from leaving the premises.
There are no estimates of how many such workshops exist, but
the growing number of illegal aliens, particularly from Burma,
increases the opportunities for such abuse.

For several years, the ILO has cited Thailand for violations of
Convention 29 on Forced Labor.  The primary focus of the ILO
criticism is forced child labor, especially child
prostitution.  Since the ILO raised these concerns, the
Government has cooperated in setting up important institutional
links, particularly with the International Program on the
Elimination of Child Labor, to help improve this situation.

     d.  Minimum Age for Employment of Children

The legal minimum age for employment is 13; most children
complete compulsory education at age 12.  The law permits the
employment of children between the ages of 13 and 15 only in
"light work," where the lifting of heavy loads and exposure to
toxic materials or dangerous equipment or situations is
restricted.  The employment of children at night (10 p.m. to 6
a.m.) is prohibited.  The Government estimates that there are
100,000 children between the ages of 13 and 15 in the labor
force, but the actual number is probably much larger.

The Ministry of Labor has increased the number of inspectors
specifically responsible for child labor issues, although not
all these officers are engaged in full-time inspection work.
Enforcement of child labor laws continues to be inadequate.
The inclination when dealing with violators is to negotiate
promises of better future behavior, rather than seek
prosecution and punishment.  Labor Ministry records indicate
that the number of prosecutions for violations of labor laws
was up slightly in 1994 (a total of 168 through August).

The Government is also dealing with child labor by extending
compulsory education from 6 to 9 years.

     e.  Acceptable Conditions of Work

A tripartite wage committee consisting of government, employer,
and worker representatives increased the daily legal minimum
wage twice in 1994.  Minimum wage rates now vary between $4.20
(105 baht) and $5.42 (135 baht) per day depending on the cost
of living in different provinces.  The wage is not adequate to
support an urban worker and his family.  With extended family
member financial contributions, the minimum wage provides the basis for a marginally adequate overall standard of living.
However, more than half of workers countrywide receive less
than the minimum wage, especially in the provinces.  Unskilled
migrant workers who pour into Bangkok from the poorer
countryside, as well as illegal aliens, often work for less
than the minimum wage.  The Ministry of Labor is responsible
for ensuring employers meet minimum wage requirements.  Despite
encouragement of employees to report violations to Labor
Inspectors, enforcement of minimum wage laws is mixed.

The Government has not mandated a uniform workweek for the
entire labor force.  By regulation, commercial employees work a
maximum of 54 hours per week, employees in industry work 48,
and those in "dangerous" work such as in the chemical,
petroleum, mining or other industries involving heavy
machinery, 42.  Transportation workers are restricted to no
more than 8 hours per day.  Enforcement of these standards is
weak.  There is no 24-hour rest period mandated by law.

Working conditions vary widely in Thailand.  In medium-sized
and large factories, government health and safety standards are
often maintained, but lax enforcement of safety standards is
common.  In the large informal sector, the health and safety
environment is substandard.  The Government designated 1994 the
"Year of Workplace Safety" and initiated a variety of programs
to deal with continuing problems.  Employers are able to ignore
safety regulations in part because nonunionized workers often
do not understand safety and health standards and do not report
violations.  When 188 workers lost their lives in the May 1993
Kader Toy Factory fire near Bangkok, the Government brought
suit against eight persons, including the managing director.
The case commenced in June 1994 and is expected to be lengthy.
There is no law affording job protection to employees who
remove themselves from dangerous work situations.  The Ministry
of Labor promulgates health and safety regulations regarding
conditions of work.  Labor inspectors are responsible for
enforcement of health and safety regulations; the strictest
penalty is 6 months in jail.