Labor Trafficking News from November

Throughout the month, there are many cases or stories that break regarding forced labor. They are usually not on the front pages of our newspapers, rather they are buried deep and sometimes are only accessible through the internet. These are some of the stories, both headline articles and those that are not, from November.

Markus Löning, Germany's Human Rights Commissioner, criticized Uzbekistan for its use of child labor in the yearly cotton harvest. He demanded that the country allow monitors to enter the country and that it stop using children during the harvest. Each year, in September, schools are closed and students as young as seven are forced to pick cotton in the fields. The country has signed two Conventions against child labor and Löning asked them to honor their commitments. At least 65 retailers including Gap and Wal-mart, boycott Uzbek cotton.

Debates raged throughout November about whether or not carpets made in India would lose designation as being produced through child and or forced labor by the United States Government. The Deputy Undersecretary of Labor, Sandra Polaski, said that the US had not determined the status of the carpets, while India's Carpet Export Council claimed that the US would drop the designation. The Department of Labor clarified that it had not removed India's carpet industry from the list, but rather believed there was not enough suitable information to determine whether it should be kept on the list. They are awaiting the results of a study on child and forced labor in Asia to determine if India should remain on the list.

The Irish Human Rights Commission asked Ireland's Government to launch an investigation of the Magdalene laundries or asylums, where women of ill-repute were forced to undertake forms of hard labor including laundry work, even into the 20th century. The Commission said that appropriate redress should be provided to the survivors of the institutions. The findings included evidence that the State knew and was involved in the process of sending women and girls to the laundries. It is also possible that the Government violated obligations it undertook through the 1930 Forced Labor Convention by not outlawing or stopping the laundries and by trading with the convents that were running the laundries. The Government admitted as early as 2001 that the women were victims of abuse but no redress has been provided.

No agreement was reached on the future of Zimbabwe diamonds after a four day meeting of the Kimberly Process. While the Chairman, Boaz Hirsch, said he was hopeful that an agreement could be reached within a few days after the meeting, as of the end of November there still was no deal. Obert Mpofu, Zimbabwe Mine's Minister, said that despite the lack of an agreement, diamonds would still be for sale with no conditions to those who wished to purchase them. Sales of Zimbabwe's diamonds were barred last year due to human rights abuses, including the use of forced labor, in the Chiadzwa fields.

Three illegal immigrants were indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with a human trafficking scheme which forced its victims to sell CD's and DVD's. Charges included conspiracy to harbor illegal immigrants and conspiracy to force labor. Victims were recruited from Mexico and forced to sell the pirated wares. The accused are believed to have intimidated victims into working until they paid off their debts.

After Cyclone Giri, which hit Myanmar at the end of October, the Government began forcing affected villagers to assist with renovations including helping rebuild military sites without pay. This was one of the hardest affected areas by the cyclone. The villagers are staying in makeshift huts, since many people have not been able at this point to rebuild their own homes and since they are forced to work from dawn to dusk on Government/Military projects.

Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department

Myanmar increases its anti-human trafficking efforts

Myanmar has been making efforts in combating human trafficking, claiming that it has rescued over 1,000 trafficked victims in four years' period since 2005 when the country's anti-human trafficking law was introduced.

More than 1,100 traffickers were also exposed in connection with 400 cases of its kind, according to the Home Ministry's Central Committee for combating human trafficking.

Those who were repatriated from Thailand are the majority, followed by those from China, Malaysia, Japan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Singapore as well as China's Macao and Chinese Taiwan, the home ministry's figures showed.

The government has so far built eight rehabilitation centers offering educational programs and vocational skill training for the returned victims.

In 2008 alone, the Myanmar authorities reportedly rescued 203 victims, punishing 342 traffickers in connection with 134 related cases.

Meanwhile, Myanmar in cooperation with non-governmental organizations has developed information networks at highway terminals in Myanmar second largest city Mandalay to curb human trafficking undertakings centered in the city.

Mandalay has been exposed as the country's internal human trafficking point and used as a transit center to reach border areas along the trafficking route of Mandalay-Pyin Oo Lwin-Lashio-Muse to other countries.

To facilitate the repatriated victims, Myanmar is also planning to set up temporary care center for them in Muse with the help of GGA organization of Japan.


>Full Article


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According to the report above, the country has demonstrated its sincere efforts to fight against human trafficking, including victims' assistance. Earlier this year, China and Burma announced their joint anti-human trafficking effort through a film shooting. Burma also closed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Thai government in an effort to decrease the country's rampant human trafficking to Thailand.

On the other hand, the military junta increased the number of child solider in an efforts of securing public order before the upcoming election to be held in 2010. [1] The family of child soldiers receive food and money at the expense of their children's military service.[2]

Human trafficking on the rise in Mekong countries

From Xinhua:

HANOI, Nov. 6 -- Human trafficking in the six Mekong countries is expected to increase due to growing migration within the sub-region, the Laos newspaper Vientiane Times reported on Thursday, citing the Anti-human Trafficking Committee Secretariat Head Kiengkham Inphengthavong as saying.

"Trafficking in persons nowadays is increasingly acute and dangerous. It operates in a very intricate manner, and comes in many forms, and is therefore very hard to monitor and control," said Kiengkham Inphengthavong at the sixth Senior Officials Meeting held in Vientiane on Wednesday as part of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative against Trafficking (COMMIT).

Annually, the number of people trafficked from and within the region is estimated at between 200,000 and 450,000, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

The meeting brought together government officials from the six Mekong countries - Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, China, Myanmar and Cambodia - to share their experiences and decide on appropriate responses to the increase in human trafficking.

"The purpose of human trafficking is not only for sexual exploitation but also labor exploitation in factories, sweatshops, domestic work, begging and in the fishing industry. The problem is far more widespread than many would think," he added.

According to the Laos' Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, from 2001 to 2008, 1,229 trafficked people, mostly women and girls, have been repatriated to Laos from Thailand under the Lao-Thai memorandum of understanding on human trafficking.

Laos is developing victim protection guidelines to ensure a more holistic and rights-based approach to the provision of care and assistance to victims of human trafficking, Khiengkham said.

Trafficking occurs in the wake of Cyclone Nargis

From the Associated Press:

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — More than 80 women and children who were victims of Myanmar's recent cyclone have been rescued from human traffickers scheming to smuggle them to neighboring countries, a media report said Thursday.

Border police caught the traffickers, who had taken victims of Cyclone Nargis from the Irrawaddy delta to border areas, between June 11 and 14, the well-regarded biweekly journal Eleven reported, citing police.

Police Lt. Col. Rahlyan Mone, from the force's human trafficking division, told the Yangon-based journal that victims facing hardship are being enticed with job offers abroad by traffickers disguised as aid workers.

Police and other authorities who deal with human trafficking could not immediately be reached for comment.

Cross-border trafficking, especially to Thailand, has grown in recent years as people in one of the world's poorest nations seek opportunities elsewhere but are often tricked or coerced into prostitution or sweatshops.

The ruling junta has warned against exploitation of cyclone victims and urged the public to report any evidence of human trafficking.

Myanmar introduced an anti-human trafficking law in September 2005 that imposes a maximum penalty of death.

Local and foreign aid officials fear that trafficking could increase in the wake of the cyclone, which hit Myanmar May 2 to 3, killing more than 84,500 people and leaving nearly 54,000 missing, according to the government.

The last numbers of the article forgot to include the estimated 110,000 who have been displaced by the damage caused by the cyclone, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers.

Despite the rather strict laws against trafficking in Myanmar, the U.S. TIP Report still lists the country in Tier Three and cites that (listed as Burma), "The military junta’s gross economic mismanagement, human rights abuses, and its policy of using forced labor are the top causal factors for Burma’s significant trafficking problem."

Why one girl refuses to remember

Part of an excellent story about how children cope with the horrors of tragedy, abuse, and exploitation:

From CNN:

Nway pretends that it never happened.

The storm didn't come. The wind didn't tear her home to pieces. The cyclone didn't sweep her mother and father away.

In those brief moments, when she tunes out the questions, the 7-year-girl from Myanmar can step back in time -- before May's Cyclone Nargis took everything away.

That's the girl aid workers from World Vision International, a Christian humanitarian group, found when they met Nway in her demolished village a month after the cyclone.

"When she was asked about the cyclone, she turned away and said she didn't remember anything about it, and left," says Ashley Clements, a World Vision worker who met Nway.

International relief groups know how to rebuild devastated countries like Myanmar. But how do they rebuild the lives of children like Nway? That's the challenge faced by groups trying to help child survivors of natural and manmade disasters.

Aid workers who deal with these children say the experience can drain their souls. They try to comfort children in Darfur, Sudan, who have seen their mothers raped; children in China who have seen their parents buried under rubble; children in Louisiana who watched their homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

No matter where they encounter these children, these aid workers face the same question: How can a child remain a child after experiencing a tragedy?

Rose Kimeu, a disaster response specialist for World Vision in African and Latin America, says many children don't know how.

"They don't laugh. They don't smile," Kimeu says. "They have this look in their eyes that's very sad... It's something that breaks my heart over and over."

What Nway wants for her future

But some of the memories aid workers carry around with them are more painful to recall.

Dean Hirsch, president of World Vision International, just returned from visiting some of the child-friendly spaces. He was struck by the children's body language.

"A lot of the children were holding onto to each other," he says. "If their mother was there, they would hold onto her, or if she wasn't, they'd hold onto the workers."

The children spent a lot of time drawing pictures of their homes, toys and pets.

"They were trying to restore through their memories what they had," Hirsch says.
A child who loses a parent faces plenty of dangers, Hirsch says. They could suffer brain damage or stunted growth if they don't eat enough.

"If they lost their father, the income source is gone," he says. 'If it's the mother, it's that person who did the food and supplied the love."

The children face other risks as well. They become easy targets for human traffickers. Some girls are exploited sexually by men.

When World Vision established child-friendly spaces in Darfur, Kimeu, the group's disaster response specialist, says her staffers noticed something odd. No girls would visit.

They later found out why. Many of them had been raped or seen their mothers raped. World Vision had male workers in the child-friendly spaces.

"They will not go near a man," says. "They will simply not show up."

The healing process varies with each child, Kimeu says. She says there was one girl who was raped in Darfur who took a year to play with other children.

Some never heal. In Uganda, some former child soldiers introduced to the child-friendly spaces never learned to be children again.

"Former child soldiers are very difficult," Kimeu says. "Some of them have killed not one but several people."

Today, Nway is being helped toward her own recovery. She lives in a village with her aunt. She plays with her friends during the day in child-friendly spaces and looks after her little cousin.

At times, Nway returns to her old village with the adults. She walks over the ruins of her old school. She proudly wears a yellow silk blouse that was donated to her. But she and the other villagers have a difficult time ahead. The cyclone blew away rice, utensils, farming tools -- even the village's cows and buffalos were swept away.

Nway may no longer talk about her past but she will talk about her future. Clements, the World Vision staffer who visited her, once asked Nway what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She talked that time. Her answer revealed that though she might not be ready to talk about her own wounds, she's already becoming more sensitive to the pain of others.

"I want," she answered after hesitating, "to be a doctor."

Human Trafficking Expert Warns of Risks to Children in Disaster Zones

From the International Herald Tribune:

Natural disasters such as the cyclone in Myanmar can put children at risk for abuse and exploitation, a human trafficking expert said Monday.

Eva Biaudet, of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said she had no specific information about the situation of children in Myanmar, but noted that similar disasters, as well as conflicts, have put minors at risk of being taken advantage of and abused.

"When there are these kind of catastrophes — when the state fails, when there are no systems — children are extremely at risk for not only of course being just abandoned ... but also for abuse and exploitation," Biaudet told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day OSCE human trafficking conference that began Monday.

"It is a very good place for traffickers to be when the state sort of fails," Biaudet said, adding that children in conflict zones were also at the risk of falling prey to such criminals. Last week, UNICEF said it believed the number of children left without guardians in Myanmar because of the cyclone is more than 600 and could rise.

No Human Trafficking Here

*A continuation of the Myanmar illegal migrants' ordeal who were supposedly smuggled, if not trafficked, into Thailand.

By Anchalee Kongrut and Wimol Nukaew

From the Bangkok Post:

Authorities say that under Thai law human trafficking required an act of exploitation, which was absent from the smuggling of people seeking proper work.

The death-truck tragedy involving 120 illegal Burmese job seekers, 54 of whom suffocated to death, is likely to be treated as a smuggling case and not human trafficking.

An initial investigation had determined the evidence did not support a human-trafficking case, immigration bureau chief Pol Lt-Gen Chatchawal Suksomjit said yesterday. It was a matter of legal interpretation, he said. "This initial finding may run counter to general sentiment and reports which labelled this as a case of human trafficking.

But there is a difference between human smuggling and trafficking, it's a matter of degree," Pol Lt-Gen Chatchawal said.

The offenders in the case would still be brought to justice.

Under Thai law human trafficking required an act of exploitation, which was absent from the smuggling of people seeking proper work. Human trafficking must involve smuggling of people with the specific objective of employing them in slave-like conditions and jobs, such as forced prostitution.

People smuggling was a crime of lesser degree. The penalties were also different.

Human rights commissioner Sunee Chaiyarose disagreed with such an interpretation, which she said was based on vague, incomprehensive laws. Treating the case as human smuggling would enable the authorities to speed up the deportations.

The survivors should be allowed to stay and claim compensation.

Representatives of the Lawyers Council would meet with the survivors, who had been moved from prison to the Ranong immigration office, and see if any would like to file complaints.

Orathai Junsawanarak, manager of the anti-trafficking and child-protection section of World Vision, said the authorities should urgently provide counselling for the Burmese. The survivors, particularly children, badly needed such services after such trauma, she said.

Ms Orathai said World Vision staff in Burma would look after these survivors when they return home and provide shelter and counselling.

Read the full article

54 Dead: Thailand Addresses Illegal Migrants from Myanmar

From Yahoo News:

BANGKOK, Thailand - Six Thai nationals will be charged with death by negligence after 54 illegal Myanmar migrants suffocated while being smuggled through Thailand in a tiny, locked truck, police said Monday.

The 54 dead were among some 120 job seekers from Myanmar crammed inside the truck, which was abandoned by the driver on April 10 when he noticed passengers dying in the back.

The migrants began suffocating when the air conditioning failed in the vehicle, normally used for transporting seafood. The migrants had been seeking jobs in the booming resort area of Phuket after being smuggled by boat from their country into the Thai port of Ranong on the Andaman Sea.

Immigration police commander Lt. Gen. Chatchawal Suksomjit said the crime of causing death by negligence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail for each person that died.

Read the full article

Update: Thailand sets June 6 as 'D-Day' for human trafficking

From MCOT:

BANGKOK -Thailand is set to issue a law on June 6 prohibiting human trafficking, following the tragedy in which 54 illegal Myanmar job seekers suffocated to death in a truck in the southern province of Ranong, senior officials said Monday.

The decision was made after a meeting earlier Monday between six government agencies and representatives from private organisations.

Currently, the Kingdom has a more modest law barring the trafficking of children and women and the new law which prohibits the activity will replace the current one, they said.

Participants at the meeting told a press conference that the 66 surviving Myanmar workers from the April 10 tragedy would be charged with illegal entry and given a suspended jail term and be fined 2,000 baht (US$63) each.

Workers without money to pay as fine were instead jailed for 10 days, said Immigration Police commander Pol. Lt-Gen. Chatchawal Suksomjit.

The survivors would also be asked to testify as witnesses against those who had been apprehended and initially charged in the case with negligence causing death to others, said Pol. Lt-Gen. Chatchawal.

Six Thai nationals – five men and a woman – have been arrested to date, while it is believed that several others, now still at large, are behind the illegal activity.

The April 10 incident has drawn great attention, nationally and internationally, to the plight of migrant workers who are willing to risk their lives escaping the hardships in their country in search of what they believe to be a better life.

*The difference between smuggling and trafficking- had the migrants been trafficked they would receive support from the government most likely in the form of food, shelter and counseling. Instead, as illegal immigrants they are being asked to help prosecute the smuggler and are being jailed and fined. Not enough evidence exists to charge the defendants with human trafficking, but if sufficient evidence is gathered in the coming weeks, this would then change the status of the illegal migrants to trafficking victims who are then eligible for government resources under the trafficking law.

The Yahoo article says an investigation could take up to 3 months to complete. Ultimately, if the defendants are found to be traffickers, wouldn't that mean the illegal migrants would have been wrongly jailed and fined? How is the government supposed to handle this issue?

Myanmar Arrests Two Over Human Trafficking

From AFP:

Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar, listed by Washington as among the world's worst human trafficking offenders, arrested a couple trying to smuggle four women to China, state media said Thursday.

In a rare acknowledgement of the problem, the Myanmar-language Mirror paper said the two [traffickers] were held as they tried to bring four women to board a train in the commercial hub Yangon to the border town of Muse. From there they would have been smuggled into China to work as maids, the newspaper quoted police as saying, and identified the couple.

The government admits women from Myanmar have been lured to China with the promise of good jobs but were instead sold and forced to marry older men. Myanmar made human trafficking illegal in September 2005, but in an annual report last year the United States accused the government of complicity in the smuggling of people to Bangladesh, China, Malaysia and Thailand. Among the reasons were sexual exploitation, domestic service and forced labour.

Myanmar sentenced 33 human traffickers to life in prison in February last year, while in 2006, Chinese and Myanmar police arrested 64 people for human trafficking.