On the night of May 21, 2013, Praiwan Seesukha, a 37-year old Thai national, died in his sleep in a farming community called Kfar Vitkin, near the town of Netanya, a few kilometers from Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Praiwan died in a cramped room in a farm shed that his Israeli employer had converted into workers’ quarters.

According to his colleagues, Thai migrant workers whom Human Rights Watch spoke to the following day, Praiwan typically worked up to 17 hours a day, seven days a week, tending to cows on a dairy farm and working in an avocado nursery. Despite written requests from Human Rights Watch and Kav LaOved, an Israeli rights group, the Israeli authorities conducted no investigation into Praiwan’s cause of death before giving his body to the Thai embassy, which repatriated his remains.