Thursday, June 15, 2006

US House Committee Focuses on Human Trafficking [in Cambodia]

June 13, 2006
VOA News


A congressional subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday on the State Department’s 2006 report on human trafficking around the world. British actress Julia Ormond, who is also a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, told about meeting the victims of human trafficking in Ghana, India, Thailand and Cambodia.

The House subcommittee on human rights met to focus on human trafficking, which claims an estimated 800,000 victims around the world, mostly women and children.

Julia Ormond is the U.N.’s Goodwill Ambassador for the Abolition of Slavery and Human Trafficking. She told the subcommittee she has met girls as young as five who had been forced into prostitution, as clients increasingly seek virgins in the belief they will protect themselves from HIV / AIDS. Ormond said it is hard to appreciate the extent of the abuse.

“The reality is that not everyone survives this ordeal. These people are often functionally invisible. They lack either birth records through lack of birth registration or citizenship, or they lack legal status in a country. Not surprisingly, invisible people are incredibly disposable,” she said.

Ormond hailed the work of non-governmental organizations in fighting human trafficking, but said nothing was as effective as governments that enforce their own laws to put an end to forced labor and sexual exploitation.

This year’s State Department report listed Belize, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe as worst offenders, or Tier 3 countries, for failing to combat human trafficking. The State Department ranks countries into three groups, or tiers, with one being the best and three the worst.

Republican Congressman Christopher Smith criticized the State Department for not placing India in Tier 3, or worst offenders’ list, for its massive problem with forced labor.

“India’s placement on the Tier 2 watchlist for the third consecutive year, despite its failure to create a national law enforcement response to the crime of trafficking, and its blatant unwillingness to address the massive problems of bonded labor and trafficking-related corruption reeks of political considerations within the Department of State overriding the facts about human trafficking,” he said.

In response, State Department official John Miller said India was not “gleeful” about the rating they received, and that the country has done some positive things. He said India is a friend, and the United States really wants to work with the Indian government on modern day slavery.

Congressman Smith also expressed concern about the World Cup soccer tournament in Germany serving as a magnet for forced prostitution. Miller said the German government was taking steps to prevent human trafficking.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

All human trafficking were being done by organised criminal syndicats. They go around telling people about rosy pictures of foreign countries. They told them to sell their home, their properties and give them all the monies so that this organised criminals can organise visa for them to another foreign country for slave workers. Eg; from 1999-2003, a group of criminals gangs included of NZ residence Lor Mong Veng, a Visa officer employed by NZ immigration office in Bangkok Twich Kanchananaga and travel agents in Phnom Penh have trafficked about 1200 people to New Zealand. This problem was bursted when a local New paper has hilighted the corruption made by Twich Kanchananaga. He was sacked.

Anonymous said...

In Cambodia, it had been business as usual for over 30 years! Who is going to do about it?

Anonymous said...

I think the best thing to investigate human traffickings is to ask FBI to investigate all foreign embassies where all the people were being trafficked to, to find out that all criminals syndicats were being organised between overseas visa officers with local criminals. There were a lot of cases that Visa officers in western countries Embassies have worked with local criminals to exploite poors and uneducated people.

Anonymous said...

there're lots of ways that the US can pin pionts abotu Cambodia..eeyore