Mainichi Daily News / February 24, 2000
Burmese refugees desperate for money are working in Thai sweatshops and cranking out fake diamonds, reports Richard Humphries
There are maybe one hundred of them in this Thai sweatshop. They range in age from eleven or twelve to their late teens. They are not at school but at work. And they work long and hard. Six days a week, from eight in the morning until eleven at night. There is some time off for meals. And pay? Yes, there is pay but it isn't much, less than ´5,000 a month, even for the foremen.
While Thailand is host to over 100,000 refugees from Burma, it is also host to hundreds of thousands of other Burmese. Burma suffers from a severe, unremitting level of poverty. It is not simply product of the Asian economic crisis though that crisis has deepened the trouble. With Burma, it is important to look inward before looking outward.
If there are two things the Burmese government has specialized in, they are brutality and mismanagement, politically, socially, and economically. The situation worsens every year. Economically, inflation has been running at roughly 20% a year and the Burmese currency, the kyat, has halved in value since 1997. Prices for basic staples are rising. Additionally, the crucial rice harvest has suffered from severe difficulties in certain areas. Everywhere, people who are living on the margin are seeing that margin slip away.
Large numbers have thus made the hazardous overland trip to Thailand. For those seeking work, their status as illegals renders them instantly vulnerable. In Thailand's unregulated border business environment, this opens the doors very wide to exploitation.
Consequently, the working conditions for these illegals range from the tolerable to the appalling and to the downright dangerous. In a sense, though, the youngsters I saw at one sweatshop in the town of Mae Sot were the lucky ones, especially the girls. At least they weren't in one of the area's many brothels like so many of their compatriots. In all of those places HIV infection is rampant. In some of them the women are virtually slaves.
This sweatshop was, I was told, similar to hundreds of others in Thailand. The building was a ramshackle affair, rather dark and dusty inside. The industry represented here, though, was very much an unusual one. These workers were making fake diamonds.
The foremen claimed that the base rock, which consisted of topaz, was brought from Brazil or Nigeria to Thailand. Here it was processed into stones that, at first glance, looked uncannily like diamonds.
The process involved three steps. First the stones were cut and shaped using grinders. Then they were glued onto a special type of stick. Finally they were polished and faceted, using metallic templates. I was told the "diamonds" were exported to Japan and Europe.
While the process was in and of itself fascinating, and I wondered whether the stones were being marketed to gullible foreigners as a "woman's best friend", the facility was clearly not healthy. The workers were seated on plastic chairs without backs. The use of grinders meant that the air was full of particles from the stones, but no one was given safety goggles to wear. The dusty atmosphere hazardous for their young lungs as well. What light there was, was provided by a few fluorescent tubes and some smaller light bulbs, the latter muted by being lit within their original cardboard packaging.
The living conditions were just as bad. A separate area of the compound had two makeshift levels, where all workers slept in sardine-like proximity. The cooking area was small and they were only two toilets for everyone. If I was distressed by what I saw, the workers did not appear to be. Their world was small. They did not leave the compound for fear of arrest and then deportation (unless they could bribe the police). Still, they did not appear sad and smiled readily. They did know that if they gave up their jobs there would be many wanting to take their places. And that is something their employers know only too well.
(RH)