Prawns - or shrimp if you're American - once a luxury - are now an everyday pleasure.
Cheap for us to buy; the human cost of their production is unimaginable.
People are sold onto and tortured on these boats
This is the story of globalised slavery; and how giant international supermarkets like
Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour, Morrisons and Iceland are selling prawns fed by slave labour.
I've seen 18, 20 people killed in front of me...
The Thai fishing industry is rife with abuse, torture and summary executions.
The captain kept on torturing him and yelling and beating him and at last he gave him electric
shocks. After all the electric shocks ... the guy couldn't even stand. And then he shot
him and threw him into the sea.
Thailand is the world's largest supplier of prawns.
A six month Guardian investigation-has traced the complex food chain from the boat to supermarket
shelf - proving for the first time - that the low price of the prawns on your plate
depends on slave labour.
Late at night a cargo boat slips into one of Thailand's busiest ports. On board is Vuthy,
a man who hasn't seen land in over 18 months.
....he's coming he's walking behind the guy with the check shirt
Like many Thai ports this is a hub for human trafficking, where an INTERNATIONAL network
of slave traders often buy and sell migrants onto Thailand's illegal fishing boats.
And he isn't safe.
"I want to get him out of here, there are many bad people over there. I want to get
him out of here."
The last time he was back on land, he was tricked and sold onto another boat. This time
his freedom has been bought by a local charity, for just £450.
Terrified and confused, and unaware that he is free, Vuthy fears that he's about to be
trafficked again - even free he still afraid to show his face on camera.
Will I have to go back (to sea?)
No you won't, don't worry
Don't be afraid they've paid to free you
I'm the one who's paid to get you out of there
they will send you back home
you can go home now
A former monk from Cambodia, he was, until today, part of the invisible migrant workforce
that props up Thailand's multibillion dollar prawn industry.
They kept me chained me up, they didn't care about me or give me any food. He kept me outside
in the wind and rain.
All the workers were the same as me.
We were treated like animals. But we're not animals, we're human beings.
Each year thousands of migrants pay brokers large sums of money to smuggle them into Thailand
in search of a better life.
With his parents struggling to feed 6 children, Aung Myo left Burma to help provide for his
siblings.
"The broker told me how much I would get if I worked in Thailand. It was an easy job,
he said."
After his mother died, Kyaw was abandoned by his father. He lived as a pagoda boy until
he left rural Burma as a teenager.
"I figured that I'd save some money, go back to Myanmar, get married and start a family."
I risked my life to come here.
The journey was awful . It took 7 days.
If we were too tired to walk they'd kick us and torture us to force us on
Somehow we found the strength to keep going.
Some people died on the way and some were left behind
We were told to lie down on the floor of the trucks in rows
Three people stacked on top of each other
I was at the bottom and I couldn't breathe
I thought I was going to die.
It was only after we drove out towards the boats that one of the guys with us who'd been
trafficked before said - do you see those boats? We've been sold. I just stared.
I was so depressed I wanted to die.
Official Thai figures estimate there are up to 300,000 people working in the Thai fishing
industry.
The vast majority of these are migrants.
Only a fraction are registered.....
....the rest are 'ghosts'.
And 'ghosts' are good business for the corrupt brokers, police and Thai officials who prey
on them.
One high-level broker agreed to talk on condition of anonymity.
If you talk about the police and the brokers we are more like partners.
And we have Thai border officials who help us traffic the migrants through.
It's a big chain and we all have to get paid
The boat captains pay the brokers around £450 for each worker, but once on board the men
are forced to work for nothing until they have paid off this debt.
I negotiate directly with the boat owners. As long as they're willing to pay my fee,
then I will arrange to bring the workers over.
Then the workers have to pay off the debt [to the captain]. That's the way it works.
These men are chattel slaves, trapped miles out at sea, catching the fish that feed Thailand's
prawn farming industry.
Without them, the industry would collapse.
Many of the prawns we eat in the West come from CP Foods' prawn farms, and some of their
feed contains trash fish.
This trash fish is the inedible and infant fish normally thrown away in the West.
It's sorted from the rest of the catch and loaded onto large cargo ships, which ferry
it back to shore.
It is turned into fishmeal and becomes part of the fishfeed fed to the prawns which CP
Foods supply to manufacturers and retailers all over the world.
Just about every retailer in the United Kingdom buys material from CP.
Thai owned CP Foods are the largest prawn farmers on the planet.
They supply most of the leading supermarkets including Tescos, Walmart, Morrison's Co op
and Iceland with frozen prawns and ready made meals.
These products come at a low cost for the consumer, but at a high price for those at
sea.
Sleeping in cramped and filthy conditions, many survive on nothing more than one plate
of rice a day.
The work is backbreaking and dangerous, hauling nets and sorting fish for up to 22hrs a day.
Those that slip up face the wrath of their Thai boat captain.
We were close and cared for each other, encouraging one another.
The rest of us including all the Burmese on all the other boats were trafficked.
There were so many of us, it would be impossible to count them all.
With little contact with the outside world, the only escape for many is suicide.
Of the dozens of fishermen that the Guardian spoke to during our investigation, most had
witnessed at least one.
He just jumped into the sea right in front of me. I looked at him, he put his hands up
.... I kept watching him. He sank into the sea. He killed himself like he wanted.
Slaves who rebel are dealt with brutally and publically as an example to others.
One eyewitness recounted what happened to a fellow fisherman who attacked his boat captain.
The other captains came and pinned him down. His hands and legs were tied up with rope
to the bows and he was pulled apart by the four boats.
That terrified me!
A lucky few escape.
After 6 months on a boat, Ayun Myo took his chances and escaped into the night.
I could make out ever so faintly some lights at shore. So I tied the buoy around my waist
and swam towards the lights - I floated and finally washed up to shore
I had no idea where I was. It was already getting light - I was just running aimlessly
through the jungle.
He was lucky - some slaves never make it back to land, and instead are sold from boat to
boat for years on end.
In a corner of Songkhla port we found one Burmese migrant back on land for the first
time in almost two years.
He was to be a vital link in the supply chain proving the connection between slaves and
the prawns on our plate.
I was cheated and sold by a broker and sent to Kantang. After I realised what had happened
I told them I wanted to go back (to Burma). They told me I couldn't go. When I tried to
escape they beat me and smashed all my teeth.
We spoke to a crew member whose cargo boat brought the Burmese slave back to shore.
There are 4 fishermen (slaves) including him on that trawler. The other three are still
To find out where the catch was going we spoke to the boat captain.
- Does this boat owner have a factory for trashfish?
- Yes.
Then we followed the delivery truck to see which factory it was going to.
This fish came from the (factory owner's) own boat.
And they also buy from other boats.
They own about ten boats.
So the owner of the factory is the owner of the boat as well?
Yes.
So the (factory) owner owns the cargo boats and the trawlers?
Yes, the cargo boats and also the trawlers.
We always buy fish from the cargo boats that buy from the trawlers at sea.
We don't sell to normal customers, we only send [our fishmeal] to the CP factory.
This was proof that CP are buying fishmeal containing trash fish caught by slaves.
Our research found that whether they had their own boats or not, factories were buying from
cargo boats and trawlers, some of which had slaves, and some did not.
The Guardian investigated several other fishmeal factories that also supply CP and found again
and again that slaves were part of their supply chain.
CP pays a premium to fishmeal factories that claim to buy trash fish caught by legal and
licensed boats.
But they never perform independent spot checks...
...and have no idea what is happening out at sea.
Even if they did the fishing licenses are easily faked.
Unaware that he was being filmed the manager of one cargo boat told the Guardian how it
works.
Where do you buy the licenses from?
We use ghost licenses! [fake]
Ghost licenses!
We keep the real license on one boat and the fake one on the other boats.
How many boats do you think use fake licenses?
Most of the boats.
However according to Dr WAR-ah-pahn PROM-pozh, an international fisheries expert, and government
advisor, this problem, she says is one of the past.
Those who do not have registration cannot perform fishing in Thai waters - or even in
international waters. We don't see that sort of ghost ship to happen in this situation
right now. Things have changed a lot.
The boat manager explained how the illegal catch and unlicensed vessels get away with
it so easily.
Do these boats get into any trouble with the Thai police?
No, they don't. I'm a policeman.
You're a policeman? Really? Are you still a policeman now?
I have many ways to make money!
Well if I am here they [port authorities] won't impound the boats [catch].
The Thai authorities say that combatting human trafficking is a top national priority.
Yet when the Guardian gave the Thai navy coordinates for the boats from which Vuthy was rescued,
they took no immediate action.
Thailand is America's second largest seafood supplier. Failure to act now may force the
US to downgrade Thailand to the lowest tier of their Trafficking in Persons index, which
could lead to economic sanctions and would see them ranked alongside countries like North
Korea and Iran.
Maybe that will lead the Thai government to realise that it is not just forming taskforces
or passing laws but in fact enforcement that matters.
There is no connectivity between labour inspectors and law enforcement to hold traffickers to
account, and actually the government is all too often complicit with corruption.
The Thai authorities may lack the political will to deal with slavery, but much of the
responsibility still falls to the retailers and supermarkets who bring the prawns to our
plate.
Campaigners like Steve Trent say they have been warning supermarkets about slavery for
years.
They can say to suppliers - if you don't make sure - adhere to our rules and regulations
we will no longer purchase from you .. and that sends out a very powerful message
When asked to comment on our findings of slavery in their supply chain, the top four global
retailers, Wal-mart, Tesco, Carrefour and CostCo and other big name supermarkets including
Morrison's, the Cooperative, Aldi, and Iceland all condemned it.
Some admitted they were aware that slavery had been reported in the Thai fishing sector,
and were setting up programmes to try to tackle it.
All declined to be interviewed.
CP Food's Bob Miller was the ONLY representative of the industry prepared to face the cameras
and address the Guardian's revelations.
It doesn't do us any great benefit to know that there is trafficking going on - that
people are being disadvantaged in this way and the more we find out . . ., then the more
uncomfortable we become.
We'd like to solve the problems of Thailand because there's no doubt that commercial interests
have created much of this problem and it will be to the commercial aspects of the industry
that the solutions will have to come.
And those solutions, say campaigners, are going to mean that the big name supermarkets
have to pay if they want to take slavery out of the prawn and shrimp supply chain.
...they are actively supporting slavery by not acting, and conversely they could be actively
working to get rid of it if they really had a desire...
When I first came to Thailand I used to think we are all equal but it's not like that here.
They beat us - but why? We're considered worthless.
The fish is more valuable than we are.
We are less than human.