NEW YORK – Rural Cambodian villagers have filed a lawsuit against four US and Thai companies, accusing them of trafficking and making them work in forced-labor conditions in a Thai seafood factory.

Their civil complaint filed in California federal court accuses the four companies in a joint venture of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a US law that aims to prevent human trafficking.

Retailing giant Walmart purchases shrimp and other seafood from the companies, two of which have US offices, according to the complaint.

Thailand’s reputation has suffered in recent years after numerous investigations by news organizations and rights groups into human trafficking, slavery and violence in its multi-billion dollar seafood industry.

It has vowed to crack down on human trafficking and slavery and recently introduced reforms to its fisheries law.

The five men and two women filing suit in a Los Angeles court claim that after they left Cambodia for Thailand, factory managers confiscated their passports and made them work up to six days a week for wages that were less than promised..
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/26269/ ... factories/

Slaves Await US Court’s Verdict

According to Voice of America (VOA), a US federal court in California last month issued a warrant ordering two US-based seafood companies and two Thai suppliers to defend themselves against a complaint filed by seven former Cambodian workers in Thailand.

US federal judge John F. Walter stated in the warrant that if the accused companies did not provide enough documents for the court to process the case, the court would issue a verdict in absentia in favor of the plaintiffs.

The complaint was filed in mid-June with the federal court in California’s Central District by a group of lawyers from the Cohen Millstein law firm against US companies Rubicon Resources and Wales & Co. Universe, Ltd., and Thai companies Phatthana Seafood and SS Frozen Food.

The complaint stated that the seven plaintiffs, two women and five men, were recruited by a local company between 2010 and 2012, who sent them to work for Phatthana Seafood in Thailand where they were working under conditions of “forced labor, involuntary servitude, and peonage.”

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/27601/ ... s-verdict/

Insufficient evidence in US trafficking case
9 January 2018
A United States district court has dismissed a case against two Thai and two American companies filed by seven Cambodians allegedly trafficked and forced to work on fishing boats.

Central District Court of California Judge John F Walter ruled on Thursday to toss out the case, with his earlier arguments contending that there was not enough evidence of a connection between companies in the US and the alleged trafficking.

The complaint was filed in June 2016 and alleges the seven Cambodians – two women and five men – were lured to Thailand under false promises and held in extreme working conditions for Thai Phatthana Seafood company in 2011 and 2012. The firm exports to the US.

When workers tried to leave, they were allegedly told they couldn’t get their confiscated passports back until they had paid off exorbitant recruitment fees, out of reach given their salaries were well below what they were allegedly promised.

The complaint contended that US companies Rubicon Resources, and Wales & Co Universe – along with Thai companies Phatthana Seafood and SS Frozen Food – were responsible for peonage, forced labour, involuntary servitude and human trafficking, as they were “participants in a joint venture that in violation of US law knowingly profited from the import and sale of shrimp and seafood produced with trafficked labor”...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/i ... cking-case

Cambodians to appeal US court's dismissal of Thai trafficking case
An appeal of the case filed by Cambodian workers alleging they suffered abuse from their Thai employers was denied this week. AFP.

11 January 2018
- A group of Cambodians allegedly trafficked onto Thai fishing boats have launched an appeal against a United States federal court judgment dismissing their complaint against four companies.

The plaintiffs – Keo Ratha, Sem Kosal, Sophea Bun, Yem Ban, Nol Nakry, Phan Sophea and Sok Sang – filed a complaint against Thai companies Phattana Seafood and S.S. Frozen Food Co, and US companies Rubicon Resources and Wales & Co, for knowingly profiting from human trafficking.

The notice of appeal was filed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday, with the legal arguments to be submitted in a few months, lawyer Agnieszka Fryszman said via email. She highlighted that the case was dismissed last week based on a lack of jurisdiction, and that the companies did not challenge “that Keo Ratha was a victim of human trafficking and forced labor”...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/c ... cking-case

UPDATE

Foreign Companies That Allegedly Trafficked Cambodians Did Not Have Sufficient Contacts With US
By Tony Oncidi on July 11, 2022

Ratha v. Phatthana Seafood Co., 35 F.4th 1159 (9th Cir. 2022)

Plaintiffs in this case (Cambodian villagers) alleged they had been trafficked into Thailand and subjected to forced labor at seafood processing factories in violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (18 U.S.C. § 1595) (“TVPRA”).

The district court granted defendants’ summary judgment motion, which the Ninth Circuit affirmed in this case. The Court of Appeals assumed without deciding that TVPRA may apply extraterritorially, but concluded that the companies in question did not have sufficient minimum contacts with the United States for the statute to apply to them. Moreover, there was no evidence that two Thai companies registered to conduct business in California either knowingly benefitted from the other companies’ alleged human trafficking or knew or should have known of the alleged violations of TVPRA.

Compare Owino v. CoreCivic, Inc., 2022 WL 1815825 (9th Cir. 2022) (Ninth Circuit affirms district court’s order certifying three class actions brought under the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (“forced labor”) and applicable employment law by individuals incarcerated in private immigration detention facilities owned and operated by CoreCivic, a for-profit corporation).
https://www.lexblog.com/2022/07/11/fore ... s-with-us/