Exploited workers in 'Little Myanmar' bank on Suu Kyi
Thai port's 250,000 Myanmese migrant workers are often 'exploited and abused'. They hope Suu Kyi's return to frontline politics paves a way home
Walk the streets of Mahachai and you might be in Myanmar rather than Thailand. Shop stores have signs in the distinctive Myanmese script, while it is almost as common to hear Myanmese spoken as it is Thai.
A major fishing port southwest of Bangkok, Mahachai is home to about 250,000 Myanmese migrant workers, one of the largest concentrations of the estimated two million Myanmese - also known as Burmese - working in Thailand.
So many Myanmese live in Mahachai that the city has been dubbed "Little Myanmar". They come to work for an average wage of 300 Baht a day (HK$75) in the hundreds of fish processing factories that have made Mahachai the main hub of Thailand's seafood industry. Others crew fishing boats or toil on the construction sites throwing up yet more shrimp-canning plants.
"Some Thais think we're taking jobs from them, but we do the dirty and dangerous jobs they don't want to," said Sein Htay, a 34-year-old from Mawlamyine in southern Myanmar. He performed all the above jobs in his 17 years in Mahachai, before working for the Human Rights and Development Foundation, a Bangkok-based NGO that helps Myanmese migrant workers.
He added: "The employers like us as they can pay us less and we work harder than the Thais."