Maung Htay is one of thousands of modern-day Burmese who have been held captive and made to work as slaves by traders in the ocean off Thailand and Indonesia.
“I worked days and nights, in the rain, in the heat and in the storm,” Maung Htay said in a telephone interview. “We were not fed sufficiently. We had to work even [when] we were injured and sick. They gave no medicine and treatments. Sick people who couldn’t work got shot.”