Video Transcripts

“Hello everyone, my name is Patomchai Kaewnaul. I am a lawyer [for] International Justice Mission. I have worked here for over three years. [At] IJM Bangkok today we are working not only with human trafficking with fishing boat and the fishing industry, but we have expanded our work to other fields of human trafficking such as construction and agriculture that have the issue of forced labour and human trafficking. [At] IJM, we’re working very closely with law enforcement and government [agencies] that support survivors and provide well- being and justice system support for them. Plus, nowadays, as you know, we have the issue of our COVID situation. And in Bangkok today, the situation is getting worse. We were locked down in Bangkok but IJM and our partners, we still move forward our case to help survivors and rescue them and help them in any field that we can do. And today our clients and everyone out there still needs help from us and from the government. And this year, Thailand was downgraded to the Tier 2 watch list. That is one of our goals—to just improve and help the government to push our country to be Tier 1 as soon as possible if we can. Today IJM is not working only in capacity building but working also in policing and in justice systems and the law to help the justice systems that have the problems—to support them and the government agency, to support them and make the system stronger and make everyone trust in our justice system and to show other countries around the world that Thailand is not ignorant about this topic, this issue. We still push really hard to move this thing forward and achieve the outcome. We want to end this.”

“Today, even with our COVID situation in Thailand, even how [much] worse it is, IJM and our partners, we still push really hard to move this thing forward to achieve our goal to end slavery in our lifetime. Today, I want you to pray for us about our COVID situation, in Bangkok, Thailand, and in anywhere in the world that’s stuck in the COVID situation. And we want you to help us and pray for us, pray for our clients to have good ideas, to have power, to empower us to move this situation, move our mission to achieve this goal in the future. I think if we push together, if we walk together to have on this thing – we can end slavery in our lifetime. Thank you.”