Amnesty International on Wednesday released a report alleging that tea workers on private estates in Sri Lanka are being subjected to conditions that “may amount to forced labour,” calling on the government to launch immediate criminal investigations and targeted inspections.
The report, “Abandoned by the State, Trapped in Private Estates,” is based on interviews with 154 workers across 45 privately owned estates in the Galle and Matara districts of Sri Lanka. Malaiyaha Tamils have worked the tea fields of Sri Lanka for generations, often struggling with low pay and limited opportunities. Wednesday’s report documents practices that fall under the International Labour Organization (ILO) Forced Labour Convention, including restriction of movement, physical and sexual abuse, peonage, and the deliberate misclassification of workers as “casual” employees in order to strip them of typical employment-protections.
The report follows previous scrutiny aimed at work conditions in Sri Lanka. In June 2024, a panel of judges from Sri Lanka, India and Nepal heard testimony directly from plantation workers; the judges said they were “horrified” by what they heard. The judges found that employers had stopped honoring collective bargaining agreements, in violation of both Sri Lankan law and ILO conventions.
Wednesday’s report also raises questions about promises Sri Lanka has made on the world stage. The country signed onto a UN roadmap in February 2024, committing to end child labor by 2025 and forced labor by 2030. Amnesty International’s report suggests that these commitments have not reached the country’s private estates, where some of the worst rights and labor abuses occur.
In a statement, Amnesty International’s regional director for South Asia, Smriti Singh, expanded on the report’s findings:
Private tea estates in Sri Lanka are systematically violating labour laws in their treatment of Malaiyaha Tamil workers with no accountability. Across the sites we visited, workers reported a consistent pattern of discrimination and abuse, including violence, debt bondage, withheld wages, and poor living and working conditions, raising serious concerns about forced labour. The persistence of these abuses despite existing legal safeguards reflects a serious failure of the state to enforce labour protections and safeguard workers’ rights… Sri Lanka’s obligation to eradicate the use of forced labour is clear—both under domestic and international law including as a member of the ILO.
Wednesday’s report comes amidst ongoing forced labor concerns internationally. A current US federal lawsuit litigates forced labor claims from Filipino workers against US-based construction companies that oversaw FIFA World Cup stadium projects in Qatar. In March, Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor enacted new guidelines to help businesses prevent forced labor in response to US trade enforcement actions and mounting international criticism of labor abuses against the country’s migrant workers. A 2024 ILO report stated that forced labor in the private economy generates annual illegal profits of US$236 billion per year.
