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Now Aung Win is working illegally in Bangkok and is too scared to return home because of the shame he expects from his family back in Burma. Stories like Aung Win’s are common for seamen in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand who find themselves abandoned, poor and jobless in foreign ports. Because so many seamen end up stranded on the port at Bangkok, one man referred to Bangkok as a cemetery for Burmese seamen. Burma-based agents, and the junta in its facilitation of such schemes through the SECD and MOSA, are clearly working outside standards set by the ILO. But as the union movement is confined to exile, it is all but powerless to stand up to operators inside Burma.