Life looks rosier for Charlie

Life is looking up for Burmese migrant worker Charlie Tiyu.

Charlie, who suffered a serious work accident in Pathum Thani on Jan 9, is now on the mend after undergoing a series of operations.

Today he will be discharged temporarily from Police General Hospital in Bangkok.

Charlie is breathing a sigh of relief, as he needs a change of environment to start thinking about what to do next with his life.

"My physical condition seems better, but my future remains bleak and uncertain. I really want to get out of here.

"Perhaps once I am in a new environment I will be able to think of what to do next," Charlie said.

For a time, his medical worries, while serious enough, appeared to pale by comparison with the treatment he received at the hands of the state.

Charlie has run the gamut of an immigration system and labour welfare system which seemed not to care about his plight, even as he struggled to recover from serious internal injuries and bone breakages.

Pathum Thani Hospital, which was treating him, reported Charlie to police after they discovered he couldn't afford his treatment bill, and that his work permit had expired on Jan 20.

Despite his ill-health, immigration police arrested him, and made preparations to deport him.

It wasn't until human rights agencies took an interest in his case that the scales of justice started tipping his way.

When we spoke to Charlie at Police General Hospital on Friday, the Songkran festival was on his mind. Were it not for his workplace accident, he might have been celebrating the water festival like other Burmese in Thailand, he said.

At the time of his accident, the 28-year-old Burmese migrant was working as a bricklayer for the SNU Supply Company, which is extending a building in tambon Kukot of Pathum Thani.

As he worked, a concrete wall crumbled and landed on his torso. It broke his left hip and caused severe injuries to his internal organs including a crushed large intestine and bruised urinary bladder.

After Pathum Thani Hospital reported his case, immigration police arrested Charlie and transferred him to the custody of the Immigration Bureau.

He was detained at the bureau on Jan 31 pending deportation. He was still in a very sick state. The Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF) heard of his plight and complained.

Charlie was transferred to Police General Hospital on Feb 1.

However, his treatment there was little better.

He was kept behind bars in a small cell inside the hospital's orthopaedic ward, shackled to his bed.

He stayed that way for four days, until HRDF reported his case to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the Royal Thai Police.

In response, the Immigration Bureau on Feb 4 ordered staff to release him from his chains.

Underlining that message, the Southern Criminal Court ordered the Immigration Police Bureau to remove his chains on Feb 15 and to pay him 3,000 baht in compensation for detaining him illegally.

After media reports about his case and intervention by the HRDF, state agencies including the CP Group, which hired his employer to build part of its provincial offices, came forward to help him.

Charlie has been issued with a new work permit and HRDF has given him a job. The Social Security Office's Workmen's Compensation Fund has agreed to pay his medical expenses of 9,128 baht for pelvic surgery at Police General Hospital, and another procedure to remove bladder stones.

The hospital has agreed to lodge a claim for the cost of removing the bladder stones with Pathum Thani Hospital.

More significantly, his case has also received the attention of the United Nations' special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante. The envoy has asked the Thai mission in Geneva to explain Charlie's case.

The HRDF, which stepped in to help Charlie after his arrest, will give Charlie a job for the next two weeks after his discharge from hospital.

After that he must return to Police General Hospital for another operation. But his health generally is much better.

A steel rod splicing his broken pelvic bones has been removed. He can now walk a little, although another steel splice remains in his back, and will do so for another year.

Charlie still has some concerns about the way he is being treated. He wants doctors to put his intestines back in their "proper" place.

The Police Hospital has said it will ask Pathum Thani Hospital to handle the work as a priority once it has finished taking care of Charlie.

For a migrant worker such as Charlie, his whole justification for being in Thailand is working. If he cannot get back to work and send some money back home, his life would be meaningless, he said.

"Somehow, I've found myself a stateless person. I was a son of a Muslim father and a Mon ethnic mother from Mawlamyine (Moulmein]) but I've been living and working in Thailand for most of my life.

"If I return home, I would be an alien in my native country as I do not have a proper identification card," he said.

Charlie is not the first migrant who has suffered from a malfunctioning migration and labour welfare system.

In December 2006, Nang Noom, a Shan migrant worker from Chiang Mai, was involved in a similar occupational accident. It wasn't until May 2008, after negotiations with her employer and informal settlements in and out of court, that she was finally awarded a total of 584,896 baht in compensation, the largest compensation settlement for a work accident involving a migrant in Thailand.