Hacker News Reader

Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about Myanmar but I am a little bit skeptical about "hundreds of thousands" in the rest (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia). I've traveled the region extensively and am in a remote place in Laos now.

I think the UN is using the word "trafficked" way too liberally. While I heard stories from fellow travelers and citizens (only in Cambodia, be careful in Phnom Penh and don't go to Sinahouk); my guess is that the majority of these are in some kind of situation (like owing money to the boss) or maybe justifying what they are doing (it's not a crime if you are forced!).

For some reason, I find this "hundreds of thousands" quite sinister. It devalues the whole issue as it normalizes it; while there are some people now in real need of help and in real danger.

View on HN

I mean, these aren't people locked up on slave ships and hauled to a new world or something, but they are absolutely trafficked in that they are forced to do the work against their will without a way out - literally modern slavery.

This comment feels mega weird to me, like you're trying to downplay the plight of these hundreds of thousands of modern-day slaves because it doesn't meet your definition of trafficking.

I'm certainly going to trust official figures coming from the UN over someone on HN who happens to be traveling in SEA

Many advocacy groups (particularly those making claims about human trafficking) fudge their numbers to make their cause seem more important, and you can see why, we would probably not be discussing this article without such an eye catching statistic in it.

If you try to see how they got this number in their report it is "credible estimates/sources" that are "on file at OHCR". So there's no way to independently verify this, you have to just trust them, which doesn't breed confidence in their estimates.

Anecdotally I met an NGO worker once in Phenom Phen who was drunk and admitted exactly this -- because he had to justify his 200K Euro job in that city. With that salary you're like a king, you'd probably do alot to keep it.

I don't see in any country in SEA -- and I live out here -- how you could hide 100K people in concertation camps to do high tech scamming.

There is a comment above about someone's Laotian wife working hard conditions doing these scams because it pays much better than local work -- this seems much more convincing.

Even the issue with the Vietnamese casino workers was only 40 people -- though not to minimize it's importance.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands across several countries, not in a single facility. If you have 50 prisoners per building, you only need 4000 buildings like that to get to 200k. This could be happening anywhere, even in large cities. You don't need huge infrastructure per location to do this, though it does take some logistics to keep it up. Running a clandestine prison in the middle of a city is not trivial, but certainly not impossible to keep under wraps. I'm surprised it's profitable, though.

For Laos and Cambodia you do. They have small populations and most cities don’t have any large buildings at all. I can understand this happening in remote areas in these countries where there are no locals and no local law enforcement. But to be happening in hundreds pf thousands scale at these small cities is not reasonable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com