To raise awareness and increase prevention of human trafficking, MTV Networks has joined forces with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) to hold a concert in Manila this Saturday night at the SM Mall of Asia concert grounds in Pasay City.
The free outdoor concert will be headlined by Korean pop sensation Jay Park, previously known as the leader of Korean boy band 2PM.
Actor and TV host Dingdong Dantes will also appear as MTV’s newest celebrity ambassador to help spread the word about the MTV EXIT campaign.
“As a member of the local entertainment industry, I may become helpful in this campaign by enlightening those Filipinos who are not yet aware of what is happening,” Mr. Dantes said in his speech during the concert’s press conference last week.
Mr. Dantes will also host a TV special called Enslaved: An MTV EXIT Special. The 30-minute documentary is the third in a 12-part series that MTV produced in Asia.
It will give audiences a glimpse into human trafficking and exploitation in the Philippines, telling the experiences of abuse and exploitation of four human trafficking survivors, and highlighting what everyone can do to help end this crime. Enslaved: An MTV EXIT Special will be aired on Nov. 27, 9:55 p.m. on GMA News TV.
At least 40 percent of male foreign tourists in the country, including Americans, come for sexual tourism, US Ambassador Harry Thomas Jr. said yesterday.
“I estimate that maybe up to 40 percent of foreign men who come here come for sexual tourism and that is unacceptable.
And any of them engaged in things that violate the law whether they are American or other foreigner should be prosecuted. That is against human values,” Thomas said during a roundtable discussion on human trafficking organized by the Supreme Court, Philippine Judicial Academy in partnership with the Court of Appeals and US Department of Justice Criminal Division.
Thomas said the US wants the Philippines to refine and strengthen its anti-trafficking law to ensure the conviction of foreigners involved in the crime.
He said he also told President Aquino and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima that the US government is resolved to prosecute any American involved in cybersex and human trafficking.
Thomas said the US provided over $6.6 million to the Philippines for its anti-trafficking program and training.
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 January.
Several exclusive country clubs in south Florida were found to be contracting slave labor. The contracting firm, owned by a husband and wife, forced 39 Filipino workers to work 16 hour days with little pay. It is unclear whether the some of the clubs were aware they were using slave labor, but it appears that at least a few were not.
Officials from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration along with three employment recruitment agencies were charged with corruption and human trafficking. The complaint suggests that officials knowingly allowed the three agencies to continue operating despite knowing they were no longer authorized to operate, due to recruitment violations. The complaint suggests that the officials allowed the recruitment agencies to operate knowing the laborers were to be exploited.
The Laogai Research Foundation, a D.C. based organization that researches and raises awareness about forced-labor prisons in China, released a report suggesting a company based in the province of Alberta, Canada is importing products made in Chinese labor camps. Canada does not allow any products made in labor camps to be imported into the country.
Leticia Moratal, a Filipina babysitter sues the NY family, also Filipino, that she worked with for forced labor, human trafficking and slavery. Though she worked long hours for 10 years, Leticia says she never received money for her labor and was subjected to cruel treatment. She also says that her employers confiscated her passport and threatened her with deportation.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of a New York City couple who were convicted of enslaving their Indonesian housekeepers. The housekeepers were abused and their documents were confiscated. The wife claims that publicity prevented her from receiving a fair trial, while the husband claims he should not have been convicted simply because he did not stop his wife from committing these crimes.
An updated indictment in the exploitation of Thai workers by an LA based labor contractor, Global Horizons, suggests that their exploitation lasted longer and covered more states than previously thought. More growers were also involved then previously thought including Del Monte. It seems now that nearly 600 Thai workers, not 400, were exploited between 2001-2007 on farms in six different states.
In a landmark case, a Saudi Arabian women has been sentenced to three years for abusing her maid who is from Indonesia. She was sentence under a recent royal decree focusing on combatting human trafficking. The maid was severely beaten and had to be hospitalized in November. This may be the first case of anyone in Saudi Arabia being sentenced for abusing a migrant worker. The convicted woman plans to appeal.
In the United Arab Emirates, a similar landmark case occurred. Two women were charged with forced labor, the first for such a charge in the UAE, for forcing three women to work in a massage parlor, providing massages and sex to customers. The victims were threatened and kept in confinement in addition to not being paid.
A North Carolina women has been accused of enslaving a teen illegal immigrant and is facing charges of forced labor and document servitude. The teen, according to prosecutors, was required to sell goods including alcohol and to clean yards. The women says that the story was fabricated by the teen who was placed in her care while awaiting a judge's decision about his immigration status.
A Ukrainian man may have been forced to work in an oxygen factor for 12 years. Details are still emerging about this case but the man claims that a few months after arriving he suffered burns and was not able to return home. At this time, his employer took his passport and stopped paying him. The man claims he was placed under surveillance by the employer who also threatened him. Later in the month though, details emerged which suggested that the man may not have been forced to work, but that there were problems with his work permit. A former employee of the company has claimed that the Ukrainian man was not forced to work, or even prevented from leaving. An investigation even suggests he may have been paid, but details are still too murky to know what happened for sure.
Photo by Kay Chernush for the US Department of State
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 December.
A couple in South Florida was sentenced for forcing almost 40 Filipinos to work in country clubs and hotels. The couple pleaded guilty to crimes such as visa fraud. The workers had their passports confiscated and were not allowed to leave their living quarters without an escort. The victims were also deprived of their wages and proper medical care.
A woman from Russia is suing a man she married in California for forcing her and her daughter into slave labor. She met the man through an online dating service. Within weeks of moving to the US, the man and his son began beating the women and forcing them to work seven days a week performing tasks such as moving large rocks on the father's rural property.
Carmakers have until January 31st to make comments on proposed regulations to prevent the use of conflict minerals in the production of vehicles. Some of the mines where minerals such as tin and tungsten are extracted employ slave and child labor.
A journalist from Hong Kong claims that Local Communist Party officials in the Sichuan Province of China are behind an organization that kidnapped people who were homeless or mentally disabled and forced them into slave labor. The investigation suggests that some of the victims were shocked, beaten and forced to live in very poor conditions.
During an INTERPOL operation, 140 victims of child labor were discovered in Gabon. The operation focused on victims exploited in the local markets, but the children were from a total of 10 different countries. More then 44 suspected traffickers were arrested. The children were forced to do various tasks including carrying heavy items and selling goods.
A jury in Brooklyn awarded a Hindu priest $2 million after finding he had been forced to work in a temple in Corona, NY for 7 years. He worked up to 18 hours a day doing everything from ministering to construction work and was only paid $50 a week amounting to merely $21,000 over seven years. His passport was confiscated and was told he would be arrested if he left.
Police in Florida raided two houses and found 27 potential victims of human trafficking. Police believe the victims were forced to work at a buffet restaurant. Though there are not many details at this time, neighbors noticed that there were many people living at the two houses and that white vans would pick up people early in the morning and would not return until very late at night.
The United States Department of Labor added a dozen countries to its list of countries that use forced or child labor. On a positive note, the department suggest that the number of child laborers is decreasing. Some of the more common products on the list include cotton, sugar, diamonds and gold. You can see the full report here.
Two British firms, Cargill Cotton and ICT Cotton, are facing charges of breaking international rules on child labor by sourcing cotton from Uzbekistan, which is well known for its use of child labor during the cotton harvest. The complaint, filed by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, claims the organizations are linked to Uzbekistan through branches in the country's capital and partnerships with state-owned merchants.
More details emerged about the the first case of human trafficking to come to trial in Canada. This article provides more details about the conditions workers endured, who is being charged and the types of evidence the government has against the families involved.
Photo by Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department.
From the Southern Poverty Law Center: SPLC Fights for Guestworker Teachers Defrauded in International Labor Trafficking Scheme
Hundreds of Filipino guestworkers lured to teach in Louisiana public schools were cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars and forced into exploitative contracts by an international trafficking ring run by labor contractors, according to a class action lawsuit filed today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Covington & Burling LLP.
The federal lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 350 Filipino teachers working in Louisiana under the federal H-1B guestworker program. It accuses officials of two labor contractors – Universal Placement International, based in Los Angeles, and its sister organization, Manila-based PARS International Placement Agency – of human trafficking, racketeering and fraud. The suit also names the East Baton Rouge Public School System, several school district officials and a California lawyer, Robert Silverman, based on their roles in the fraudulent trafficking scheme.
"The outrageous conduct by the companies that recruited these teachers and those who assisted them in carrying out their scheme is part of a larger pattern of exploitation that we've documented in guestworker programs," said SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer, author of the 2007 report Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States. "It's clear that the very structure of the program lends itself to pervasive worker abuse. Guestworker programs should not be the model for immigration reform."
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the home state of Universal. Included as defendants are Lourdes "Lulu" Navarro, owner and president of Universal; Hothello "Jack" Navarro, a director at Universal; and Emilio V. Villarba, a representative of PARS. In 2000, Lourdes Navarro was convicted of defrauding California's MediCal program of more than $1 million and served a year in Orange County Jail. Villarba, Navarro's brother, was also charged in the scheme but was never apprehended and is now in the Philippines. In 2003, Lourdes Navarro also pleaded guilty in New Jersey to money laundering.
Public schools across America are increasingly turning to the H-1B guestworker program to fill teaching positions. According to a recent report by the AFT, the number of overseas teachers brought to the United States increased by nearly 30 percent between 2002 and 2006, from 14,943 to 19,393. The five states with the most overseas teachers are Texas, New York, California, Maryland and Louisiana, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
"For more than two years, we have been working toward this moment," said Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan. "The practices described in this lawsuit are disgusting, unacceptable and, frankly, un-American. We are very pleased to have the SPLC and Covington & Burling as partners in the pursuit of justice for these teachers and to put an end to these abuses."
About 200 of the teachers were assigned to the East Baton Rouge school system; others were spread among the Caddo Public School District, Jefferson Parish Public School System and the Recovery School District as well as other school districts in Louisiana. Only the East Baton Rouge district was named as a defendant.
The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 after each paid about $16,000, several times the average household income in the Philippines, to obtain the jobs. The H-1B guestworker program, administered by the Department of Labor, permits foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for a period of up to six years.
"These teachers have been victimized in ways reminiscent of the worst abuses students learn about in history class: labor contracts signed under duress and arrangements that remind us of indentured servitude," said AFT President Randi Weingarten. "The goal of this lawsuit is to put an end to this exploitation, which should have no place in 21st-century America."
Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the recruiting fees; the recruiters referred them to private lenders who charged 3 to 5 percent interest per month. Teachers were forced to pay these exorbitant fees because they had already made substantial financial investments that would not be returned and because the recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until they paid. The teachers were also forced to sign away an additional 10 percent of the salaries they would earn during their second year of teaching. Teachers who resisted signing the contracts were threatened with being sent home and losing the thousands they had already paid. The recruiters also charged fees for arranging substandard housing and threatened teachers who complained or sought to move to a new location.
Ingrid Cruz said she and the other teachers were deceived into selling property, resigning from jobs, borrowing money and leaving behind children and friends in search of a more secure future. "We were herded into a path, a slowly constricting path, where the moment you feel the suspicion that something is not right, you're already way past the point of no return," Cruz said. She added that the teachers consider Louisiana their home and have a strong commitment to the state's children.
Under the guestworker program, workers facing exploitation generally must either continue working for the employer that brought them to the United States or return home. Because they often are left deeply in debt from exorbitant recruiting fees, they typically have little choice but to remain on the job.
"These teachers thought they were buying a piece of the American dream but instead were put in a nightmarish financial bind by labor contractors who operated a fraudulent trafficking scheme," said Dennis Auerbach, an attorney with Covington & Burling LLP in Washington, D.C. "They've bravely come forward to correct this injustice and expose the abuses that many other guestworkers are undoubtedly also facing."
In a 2009 report, the AFT called on federal, state and local governments to take more vigorous action to monitor the hiring of migrant teachers by U.S. school districts. Among the steps needed is the adoption and enforcement of ethical standards for international recruitment of teachers, as well as better access to government data needed to track and study international hiring trends.
Noah Theriault, a friend of mine and Fulbright scholar (Philippines '07), recently launched a website that translates U.S. labor laws into Filipino. In his words:
We made this website as part of a “service-learning” project for an Advanced Filipino language course we took over the summer at the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute in Madison, Wisconsin. Our initial research suggested that there was very little information on U.S. labor laws available in Filipino on the Internet. Even though many Filipinos speak English well, we felt that having the information available in the other national language of the Philippines would be beneficial to those looking for additional clarity. With that in mind, we wrote brief but informative summaries of the key federal labor laws that protect workers’ rights, as well as a brief explanation of what happens when local, state, and federal laws differ. In essence, we designed the website to highlight the basic rights and protections of which all migrant workers should be aware when coming to work in the U.S.
Although many people assisted us with this website, we are entirely responsible for any errors contained in it. Ultimately, the information on this website is not meant to replace professional or expert counsel. Instead, it is intended to: (1) promote consciousness of labor rights among Filipino migrant workers in the United States and (2) provide links to legal information and resources for workers.
Wisconsin Couple Sentenced for Forcing a Woman to Work as Their Domestic Servant for 19 Years
Jefferson Calimlim Sr. and his wife, Elnora Calimlim, both medical doctors in Milwaukee, Wis., were each sentenced today to 72 months in prison for forcing a woman to work as their domestic servant and illegally harboring her for 19 years in their Brookfield, Wis., residence.
The defendants, initially sentenced on Nov. 16, 2006, to four-year prison terms each, were re-sentenced today, after the Court of Appeals identified legal errors in the initial sentencing and remanded to the trial court for re-sentencing.
On May 26, 2006, Jefferson Calimlim Sr. and Elnora Calimlim were convicted by a Milwaukee federal jury for using threats of serious harm and physical restraint against a Filipina to obtain her services, in violation of federal law. Jefferson Calimlim Jr. was convicted of harboring an illegal alien.
According to evidence presented at trial, Jefferson Calimlim Sr. and his wife recruited and brought the victim from the Philippines to the U.S. in 1985 when she was 19 years old. In September 2004, federal law enforcement officers responding to a tip removed the victim, then age 38, from the Calimlim’s residence through the execution of a federal search warrant. The victim testified that for 19 years she was hidden in the Calimlim’s home, forbidden from going outside and told that she would be arrested, imprisoned and deported if she was discovered.
"Our Constitution promises freedom to all," said Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. "The defendants denied the victim the basic right to her freedom. The Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting those who prey on vulnerable members of our society and hold them in modern-day slavery."
"Human Trafficking is a form of modern day slavery and is simply not acceptable. No person should ever be forced to live in fear, virtual isolation and servitude," said Acting U.S. Attorney Michelle L. Jacobs for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. "The prosecution of human trafficking offenses is a top priority of the Justice Department, and our office is committed to aggressively pursuing these cases."
In Fiscal Year 2008, the Department brought a record number of human trafficking cases, including both the highest number of both sex trafficking and labor trafficking cases ever brought in a single year.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Johnson and Trial Attorney Susan French of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. The case was jointly investigated by the Milwaukee Office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI.
We use this case a lot when we conduct trainings in Western New York, specifically because the jury was able to convict two people for trafficking and maintaining control of one woman for 19 years. It shows that juries are able to understand the element of this crime that is often most difficult to prove: force, fraud or coercion. Essentially, what was the intent of the trafficker and the mindset of the victim? In this case, to prove that the traffickers were able to keep control for 19 years means this was an exceptionally well-organized case and important to the counter-trafficking movement in general both on a court and law enforcement level, and on the level of average citizens who took part in the jury.
On the down side, this woman was held and forced to serve this couple for 19 years and her traffickers are now only serving 6 years each. Despite the positive fact that this couple was actually convicted for trafficking (as in the infrequent situation that traffickers are actually convicted of the exact crime as opposed to other related charges), the traffickers lose their freedom for not even half of the time they deprived the survivor of her freedom. This speaks to the way US law treats labor trafficking cases. Time to reconsider?
The Mission The Emancipation Network (TEN) is an international organization that fights slavery with empowerment, 'slavery-proofing' survivors and high risk communities by giving them economic alternatives and education and using the Made By Survivors products to help build the abolition movement in the US.
History The Emancipation Network (TEN) was founded in 2005 by Sarah Symons as an organization dedicated to fighting human trafficking and modern day slavery. TEN imports and sells beautiful handicraft products made by survivors of slavery and persons at risk of being trafficked into slavery.
Sarah Symons, the founder and president of TEN with a group of teens at the Apne Aap partner NGO in India.
TEN combines public outreach and education programs about human trafficking with income-generating programs for survivors and high risk girls. Staff members, "Ambassadors" and volunteers organize awareness events across the country to educate people about human trafficking and sell the Made by Survivors products. Sarah was inspired to start TEN after viewing "The Day My God Died," a film about sex trafficking in Nepal and India. She visited Maiti shelter in Nepal and stumbled across a room full of beautiful purses. These handbags were made for art therapy, but Sarah had the idea to sell them in the US and raise money for the girls. The idea became reality and now the selling of Made by Survivors products generates income for both survivors and at-risk groups. Since Sarah's first visit to Nepal in 2005, TEN has expanded to work with over 20 partners in 12 countries.
Watch the Day My God Died trailer
Current Programs TEN has programs both abroad and in the US.
Abroad TEN has over 12 programs and partners in countries such as: India, Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines, Ukraine, and Uganda. One of our exciting new programs is the Destiny Program in Calcutta, India.
Destiny Productions at the Thomas Clayton Center in Calcutta, India is TEN's newest initiative to help survivors become fully independent, and to slavery-proof them and their children into the future.
One of the biggest problems confronting the shelters that rehabilitate survivors is that the survivors have no place to go. They are often not welcome back in their own community, especially if they were sold into prostitution. Typically they were trafficked at a young age (average 11-12 yrs) and have never lived independently. This not only means they don't have good options for the survivors, but it also means that the shelters can't free up space to take in newly rescued survivors.
To assist survivors in reintegration, this summer, The Emancipation Network, in partnership with T.E.N. Charities, the Clayton family, and three of our shelter partner organizations, opened Destiny Productions at the Thomas Clayton Center in Calcutta, India. Destiny Productions is housed in a rented 3-story house in the Kasba neighborhood of Calcutta. Calcutta is a city of over 18 million people, near the Nepal border in Northwest India where poverty and human trafficking are endemic.
Watch a video on Destiny Productions
United States TEN offers concerned persons in the US the opportunity to take action to fight human slavery, and to make a real impact in the lives of survivors and high risk girls. TEN works together with other organizations to create a critical mass of concerned persons who can put pressure on those who tolerate the modern practice of slavery. We have educated tens of thousands of Americans about human slavery and trafficking, mostly in small groups of 10 or 20, in volunteers' homes, schools, and places of worship.
Milestones John Berger, one of TEN's founders, with a group of girls who are benefiting from one of our partner organizations-Apne Aap
TEN has reached approximately 10,000 Americans with slavery education at home parties and community events and is currently employing approximately 300 survivors/high risk people part-time or full-time at shelters and prevention programs. TEN opened its own protection center, the Destiny Project, in the summer of 2008.
Future Growth In the future TEN will address increasing NGO demand for its services by growing its marketing program and increasing the number of volunteers and reps it maintains to sell more survivor-made products and generate the funds needed to expand its business development services.
This is a post from Dipnote, the official blog of the U.S. State Department:
About the Author: Ambassador Mark P. Lagon is Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State and Director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
I have recently visited two major powers in the Middle East -- Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- quite different from one another in the context of trafficking in persons (TIP). I came away with striking impressions from my visits and dialogue.
There are some promising efforts in Egypt. Amendments to the child protection law last June define for the first time crimes of trafficking of children. This includes the most serious TIP vulnerability in Egypt: children (especially street children) exploited as domestic servants or in prostitution.
Since ratification of the UN TIP Protocol four years ago, discussion of crafting a comprehensive anti-human trafficking law has seemingly accelerated. The Egyptian anti-TIP interagency group (like the one I chair in the United States) is consulting with UN agencies on the law's content, and we hope it will cover internal, as well as transnational (e.g. through Egypt to Israel), TIP.
Notably, a rising generation of key government officials has a clear interest in fighting the gross exploitation which constitutes TIP.
Nonetheless, it was clear from our visit to Cairo that Egypt needs a system for identifying victims and for referring them to social services. Although drop-in centers for vulnerable street children exist, we hope the Government of Egypt and civil society will band together to make these centers safe havens for all children exposed to forced begging, sexual exploitation, and other harm on the streets.
Sexual exploitation of young people is taking some troubling forms in Egypt. We learned of Sudanese refugee girls and young women lured into prostitution by gangs. This is a sorry fate for those fleeing Sudan. Moreover, sex tourists are increasingly going to places like Luxor and Alexandria to abuse Egypt's young. I stressed how the United States has enacted and enforced laws to punish child sex tourists who commit crimes abroad, and is urging European nations to follow suit. One particular horror is Saudi and other Gulf visitors acquiring (and I use that word purposefully) youth brides in so-called "temporary marriages."
It was, in fact, the Gulf and Saudi Arabia which we flew to next. I had very direct dialogue with the Ministries of Interior, Labor, and Social Affairs, sharing our steady, though not perfect, experiences in confronting TIP at home.
The sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia -- tying migrant workers to a single employer -- is rife with vulnerability to human trafficking. This system, which is seen throughout the Gulf, is compounded in Saudi Arabia by the disproportionate power given to employers of housemaids, construction workers, and agricultural laborers in the form of exit permits. A migrant worker cannot leave the country without the okay of their "sponsor." This gives unscrupulous employers devastating leverage should they subject workers to abusive conditions or withhold their pay. We heard countless testimonials of this kind of abuse.
One potentially positive initiative is discussion of reforming this sponsorship system. We were told by senior officials of serious discussions to create large labor companies in the Saudi Kingdom to more flexibly manage the placement of workers. If adopted this could do much to reduce the vulnerability of migrant workers, and indeed offer momentum to similar changes throughout the smaller states of the Gulf.
We visited two shelters -- one run by the Ministry of Social Affairs and one by the Embassy of the Philippines. The contrast between the two was marked. The Government shelter is limited to serving female domestic workers who are not met by employers at the airport, as well as short-term guests near resolution of contract disputes in court. But there is no systematic or broad referral of victims to this shelter.
By contrast, the Philippines is as active on behalf of the welfare of its migrant workers in the Kingdom as it is worldwide. We met with housemaids compelled to flee employers. One woman was in two leg casts after leaping to escape from a window. We heard of employers' repeated violence, and the squeezing of every hour of the day and ounce of energy from these survivors. One such survivor described the brutality of the employer who kicked, pushed, and punched her for the slightest mistake. Facing years of court battles if they brought their cases to the court, many of these women opted dejectedly to simply return to the safety of their home countries.
The stories of these victims drove home the violence and desperation women and migrant workers face in Saudi Arabia and many other countries, at the hands of people who treat them as less than human. States must step up to the responsibility of protecting the helpless on their soil. The United States devotes diplomacy to this cause every day.
Department of Justice (DOJ) undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor hailed the initiative of the private sector and other non-governmental organization in assisting the government in its fight against human trafficking syndicates.
Blancaflor particularly praised the steps taken by pioneering computer and software giant Microsoft Corporation in educating through the internet young women throughout Asia regarding the evils and dangers of dealing with illegal labor recruiters.”
Microsoft’s initiative will do a great deal in boosting the campaign against human trafficking. It will definitely bear fruits one of these days,” he said.
Blancaflor stressed that the government’s limited resources in going after these syndicates make this alliance with the private sector very convenient.
He said NGOs and private sectors allies of the DOJ are very useful in providing information and logistic support in going after human traffickers.
Blancaflor made this pronouncement shortly after he informed the media that Philippine and Malaysian authorities succeeded in neutralizing a Kuala Lumpur-based Singaporean national, Alfred Lim, who is involved in human trafficking of Filipinas and other nationalities.
He said the arrest and filing of appropriate charges against Lim by Malaysian and Philippine authorities speak well of the cooperation between Southeast Asian nations in the war against human trafficking.
MANILA, Philippines -- A congressional inquiry into the worsening cases of Filipino trafficking in Singapore has been sought by a lawmaker at the House of Representatives. ARC Partylist Representative Narciso Santiago III said Congress should look into reports that Filipino trafficking in Singapore has reached an all-time high last year because of budget air fares, which aggravated the situation.
From 125 cases of human trafficking in 2006, the number went up by 70 percent or 212 cases in 2007, Santiago said, citing an alleged report by Philippine Ambassador to Singapore Belen Fule Anota.
He said the Philippine embassy in Singapore blamed this to the network of illegal recruiters and "quite possibly, syndicates across borders, which manage to persuade their recruits through various modes of deception and intimidation."
"Filipino victims are pushed to try their luck in Singapore not only because of poverty but also because of the promise of a lucrative job overseas," he said.
"The report states that the existence of a large number of bars/pubs in Singapore's red light districts fuels the demand for Filipino women," he pointed out. Based on records, Santiago said, the modus operandi essentially has illegal recruiters promising young women non-existent jobs as waitresses or guest relations officers in restaurants and hotels in Singapore.
"They are each charged a minimum of $100 as recruitment fee in the Philippines and given roundtrip tickets where the return ticket is oftentimes fake, a fake invitation letter, and "show money" for presentation to Philippine immigration officials who scrutinize their financial capacity as tourists," he said.
MANILA, Philippines—A non-government organization advocating migrant workers' welfare urged the government on Thursday to forge an anti-human trafficking agreement with Malaysia following the rescue of Filipino women forced to become prostitutes in the Malaysian state of Sabah.
The Blas F. Ople Policy Center quoted recent media reports from Malaysia relating how the eight Filipino women, allegedly recruited from Zamboanga about three months ago to work as waitresses, were forced to work as prostitutes upon their arrival in arrival in Sabah.
Acting on an informant’s tip, the police raided an apartment in Penampang, a small town adjacent to the capital city of Kota Kinabalu, where the women, aged between 18 and 25, were kept.
“The illegal recruitment and trafficking of Filipino women to Malaysia is fast becoming a thriving enterprise and we call on the Malaysian and Philippine governments to forge a bilateral pact against human trafficking,” the center's president Susan Ople said in a statement.
Ople said that based on the information gathered by the Center, previous victims of human trafficking were promised decent jobs in either Kuala Lumpur or Sabah by their recruiters who turned out to be receiving P3,000 per head from a syndicate in Malaysia.
“With mere P3,000, the recruiter turns a blind eye on whatever fate awaits the recruit bound for Malaysia,” she said.
The former labor undersecretary said local governments must also work together with other NGOs and relevant government agencies in a grassroots public information drive against human trafficking.
“The recruitment is now done door-to-door in both urban and rural areas and the only way to stop this is through active public vigilance leading to higher arrest and conviction rates,” she added.
“A small number of women are occasionally trafficked from China, South Korea and Russia to the Philippines,” the report notes. “Sex tourists came from Northeast Asia, Europe and North America (seeking) minors.” But overall, the Philippines remains a “country of origin.”
Every day about 3,000-plus Filipinos migrate.
And some find themselves trapped in brothels. Many slave under forced labor conditions.
A two-stage “railroad” operates here. From indigent communities in the Visayas and Mindanao, women and children are funneled into Cebu, Manila and other cities. Some end up in whorehouses. Others become abused workers in homes or factories.
The second stage kicks in when Filipinas are peddled abroad as sex workers. They are shipped “primarily to Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and countries in the Middle East and Western Europe.”
“Traffickers used land and sea transportation to transfer victims from island provinces to major cities,” the report found. “A growing trend is the use of budget airline carriers to transport victims out of the country. Traffickers used fake travel documents, falsified permits and altered birth certificates.” Traffickers often confiscate passports, identity cards and airline tickets to control a victim. Without these documents, migrants are vulnerable to deportation. “This is legal coercion.”
US federal law now makes it illegal to seize documents to force others to work, the report notes. “Foreign governments are encouraged to criminalize withholding of travel documents.” People-trafficking and people-smuggling often overlap, says the analysis “Drawing Lines In A Dark Place.” This is “an uncomfortable but almost unavoidable part of social reality in areas that adjoin rich countries with a demand for labor.”
Burmese and Cambodians have been hoodwinked by promises of high pay on fishing boats in Thailand and the Andaman Sea. They ended up abused slaves. The bodies of some victims were “dumped as common refuse,” the US report says. “Few environments are more conducive to exploitation than the high seas.”
“A significant number of Filipinos work under conditions of involuntary servitude.” Cases cropped up in Bahrain, Canada, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Côte d’Ivoire, Japan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Palau, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Trafficking through brokered marriages has surged. Brides from Vietnam, Cambodia or Mongolia are picked “through the Internet in the comfort of home,” the report adds. Some Indonesians were prostituted by fake “Taiwanese husbands.” Over 20,000 Vietnamese women married in Taiwan through marriage brokers. International marriages in South Korea now crest at 43,121. “An international marriage market is booming,” studies by Minda Valencia, Myra Ramos and Nimfa Ogena revealed. In 2006, there were 24,905 marriages to foreigners registered, up from 21,100 the previous year. “[Many] Filipina brides head for Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.”
MANILA, Philippines – Twenty-three women, including a minor, believed to be victims of human trafficking were rescued by the police from a five-story building in Valenzuela City on Tuesday.
Valenzuela police chief, Senior Supt. Ranier Idio, told Inquirer that the women were promised jobs abroad by Andy and Thelma Que, owners of Philquest Agency.
The victims, who had been recruited from various provinces in Visayas and Mindanao, were temporarily staying in the building while waiting for their applications to be processed.
Idio said at least 300 women were staying in the building, all of them waiting for their chance to go abroad.
The victims, however, were not allowed out of the building as they had been unable to pay the fees demanded by the couple. One of the victims even alleged that Andy Que had molested her several times.
The couple was later charged with qualified trafficking in persons and large-scale illegal recruitment. They, however, denied all the charges against them.
“They were promised jobs abroad. But they claimed some of them had been staying in the building for more than a year and worked as housemaids for the couple who recruited them from the province without being paid,” Idio said.
He added that it took two hours before the team composed of operatives from the Central Investigation Detection Group and the Anti-Illegal Recruitment Task Force of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and local police were allowed to go inside the building.
The operation stemmed from a complaint filed by Nora Salik, one of the victims recruited by the Ques, who was able to escape from the building.
According to Salik, she had changed her mind about working overseas and told the couple that she just wanted to go back home to Maguindanao province. The Ques, however, allegedly refused to let her go unless she paid them P10,000 for letting her stay in the “dormitory.”
MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines is among the top five countries in the world where most human trafficking victims come from, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) said Monday.
In the Weekly Kapihan ng Bayan forum in Sulo Hotel, lawyer Ferdinand Lavin, chief of NBI’s anti-human trafficking division, said there are more than 15 million human trafficking victims worldwide and the country has a “good share” of the number.
He said 80 percent of human trafficking victims in the country are females below 18 years old, and that they are usually brought to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and even Cyprus.
“They are usually forced by syndicates to work as househelp, entertainers and even sex workers particularly in the South East Asian region,” Lavin said.
Lavin admitted that tracing human trafficking victims is a difficult task because most of them are “willing victims” and will only seek the help of the government when they experience abuse from employers.
He also said they are having difficulty in tracking down human traffickers especially in Mindanao.
“We can prevent those (individuals) that will use our air and sea ports, but there are also those who use the so-called southern backdoor,” he said.
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will strengthen local and international efforts in curbing illegal recruitment and human trafficking in all forms, following the release of a report from a non-government organization indicating an increase in human trafficking activities in the Philippines.
Labor and Employment Secretary Marianito D. Roque, also chair of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Board, made this assurance as he bared that the government has consolidated all its resources and focal agencies into one Task Force to directly address the problem of illegal recruitment and human trafficking.
Roque said through Executive Order (EO) 548-A issued recently by President Gloria Arroyo, the role of the POEA, an attached agency of the DOLE, was defined and strengthened by R.A 8042, or the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995.
EO 548-A amended and superseded a previous EO and created a task force against illegal recruitment under the supervision of the Commission of Filipino Overseas (CFO), that is also in charge of the Task Force Against Human Trafficking (TFHT) as provided for by EO 548-A.
”This [EO 548-A] shall enable the POEA in coordination with the regional offices of the Department of Labor and Employment to ensure greater focus in fighting illegal recruiters down to the local level,” he said.
Roque said that the executive order underscored the on-going campaign of POEA to involve local government units (LGUs) in the fight against illegal recruiters.
He said that the agency has forged agreements with LGUs in Metro Manila late last year, particularly with the city governments of Taguig, Valenzuela, Malabon, Mandaluyong, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa and Quezon City.
The agreements, he said, called for the active participation of the concerned local government units LGUs in the surveillance and investigation of establishments and entities suspected of illegal recruitment acts in their respective jurisdiction.
The labor chief said that POEA is set to forge similar agreements with other LGUs in Metro Manila and other regions this year, in line with Executive Order No. 548-A and RA 8042.
As TFHT chair, the CFO shall recommend to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) policies, programs, and services aimed at eliminating trafficking in persons. The IACAT is the primary body tasked to coordinate, monitor and oversee the implementation of programs against trafficking in persons as provided for by RA No. 9208, otherwise known as the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003.
“We always believe that the best way to prevent or minimize illegal recruitment or human trafficking is for would be overseas workers to check and verify first with the authorities, particularly with POEA, any offer of overseas job by individuals or entities engaged in overseas employment before dealing with them,” Roque said.
The Labor secretary added that among the safety nets and measures established by the DOLE to mitigate if not totally eradicate or prevent illegal recruitment and human trafficking is the conduct of Pre-Departure Orientation Seminars, the establishment of Public Employment Service Offices in cities and municipalities nationwide to assist workers seeking local or overseas employment; and building linkages with various agencies of government charged with migration and travel.
Overseas, Roque said the 34 Philippine Overseas Labor Offices of the DOLE established worldwide help trace, shelter, assist and repatriate victims of illegal recruitment and human trafficking. Aside from DOLE’s initiatives, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) has installed cellular phones signal jammers as added security measure and to strengthen measures against human trafficking and irregular facilitation and escort of passenger at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), the country’s premiere international gateway.
BI Commissioner Marcelino Libanan said that 12 units of cellular phone signal jammers and dampers will be installed at the NAIA’s arrival and departure area of the premier airport. The cellphone jammers are only going to block signals near the immigration area. Some BI personnel allegedly used cell phones to communicate with persons involved in human trafficking and irregular facilitation and escort of passengers. Libanan said that he had endorsed the purchase and installation of said electronic equipment to strengthen the ban on immigration personnel from using cell phones while still on duty at the NAIA. “Apparently, there were still other immigration officers disregarding the rule,” Libanan said in a statement issued on Monday.
The Immigration commissioner said that there’s a need to strictly implement the cell phone ban at the NAIA to strengthen the bureau’s drive against human trafficking and it also prevents corruption. The installation of cell phone jammers and dampers were proposed by NAIA-BI Operations chief, Ferdinand Sampol who said that cell phone use by immigration personnel leaves a bad impression to the public. ”It gives the public the impression that they are the contact persons of those seeking irregular facilitation,” Sampol said in the same statement.
