Put traffickers behind bars

Put traffickers behind bars

Governments worldwide have a sworn duty to protect the weak and vulnerable from physical exploitation by criminal gangs. The onus becomes even greater if forced prostitution, domestic servitude or slavery in sweatshops or aboard fishing vessels is involved. When the authorities neglect this obligation they risk being branded as culpable by the US State Department in its annual human trafficking report, a fate that has just befallen Thailand for the fourth consecutive year. Washington has again declared this country to be an international people trafficking hub.

The US Trafficking in Persons report, released this week, contains a blistering indictment of corrupt practices. It cites "credible reports that corrupt officials protected brothels, other commercial sex venues, and seafood and sweatshop facilities from raids and inspections, colluded with traffickers, used information from victim testimony to weaken cases, and engaged in commercial sex acts with child trafficking victims". It notes that although the government reported investigating 305 trafficking cases in 2012, versus 83 in 2011, it initiated prosecutions in only 27 cases during the year and obtained just 10 convictions.

If this isn't bad enough, the US assessment says that evidence exists of collusion between specialist police officers assigned to trafficking hotspots and the gangs operating there and that "Thai police officers and immigration officials reportedly extorted money or sex from Burmese [Myanmar] citizens detained in Thailand for immigration violations and sold Burmese migrants unable to pay labour brokers and sex traffickers". Despite such strong allegations, Thailand remains on Washington's Tier 2 watch list for another year but can expect a downgrade in 2014 if the government fails to carry out its declared plan to meet the minimum standards for the elimination of such trafficking.

As disgraceful as these accusations are, most have been documented before in equally damning reports by the International Labour Organisation, Mahidol and Chulalongkorn universities. What is most alarming is the increased scale of illegal activity and the timing. The US report comes five years after a tough law to combat human traffickers came into force and extended its protection to all those in danger of becoming victims of forced labour, prostitution, sexual abuse, or trade in human organs.

It increased the punishment meted out to traffickers, spared victims from prosecution and concealed their identities. It also freed high-ranking police officers from having to obtain search warrants when actively in pursuit of suspected human traffickers and while rescuing their victims. It is disappointing that the results of all this hard judicial and legislative work are fewer convictions than those recorded for wildlife traffickers, drug or even dog smugglers. Laws are only as good as the people whose job it is to enforce them and police have shown little inclination to get involved. Lax attitudes have to change before anything else will.

Their plight is often ignored because of the power of the sinister forces behind the people smuggling. Such a vile trade can only be sustained by callously exploiting the desperation and misery bred of poverty and collapse of family and religious values.

The government cannot pretend ignorance of this huge social problem. It must tackle it head-on. The world is watching and there will be further damage to our reputation if complacency and the status quo are maintained. The difficulty is that like so much else, the root of the problem is corruption and the will to tackle that particular fount of evil is token at best.

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