Nation's emerging hotspots in human trafficking
Joe FernandezPublished: Apr 15, 2009 7:21 AM | Updated: Apr 15, 2009 9:19 AM
Labuan Federal Territory, Limbang in Sarawak and Sandakan along the eastern seaboard of Sabah have emerged as the top hotspots for human trafficking, in particular white slavery and forced prostitution of young girls and children.
Labuan Federal Territory, Limbang in Sarawak and Sandakan along the eastern seaboard of Sabah have emerged as the top hotspots for human trafficking, in particular white slavery and forced prostitution of young girls and children.
The victims are not only from Malaysian Borneo but also from the Philippines, Sulawesi and other parts of Indonesia, Vietnam and even as far away as China and India.
This is the picture that emerges from an on-going two day workshop, Role of the Media in Countering Trafficking in Persons (TIP), which began yesterday in Kota Kinabalu. The workshop in which 20 journalists are taking part was jointly organised by Tenaganita, the International Catholic Migration Commission Jakarta and the Sabah Journalists Association.
Malaysia is not only a destination country, the meet has discovered, but "a source and transit country for trafficked persons including those forced into prostitution, sex slavery, sex vacations, labour, domestic servitude and adoption."
"The problem is that countries like Singapore have legalised prostitution. They do not see that anyone can be forced into prostitution. So, they are claiming there is no trafficking of sex slaves. Of course, we are challenging that claim," Tenaganita director Irene Fernandez told the meet.
In Sabah, disclosed Fernandez, one of the modus operandi of the traffickers is to lure unsuspecting young people from the remote, interior and rural areas on the promise of jobs in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore or places in college in Peninsular Malaysia.
"Normally, the families would sell off their lands to put their children through college. Instead, they are brought to work in plantations under Felda schemes, for example," alleged Fernandez.
"They would eventually run away because of the workload. We have facilitated many to return home," she added.
The Singapore dimension
In the Singapore dimension, according to the discussions at the meet, recruitment agents or their runners would look for potential victims in interior locations like Keningau, Tambunan and Tenom.
These agents would even see the parents to convince them of good job opportunities for their children in Singapore. There are also agents who convince the parents to pay for the airfare, passport and work permits.
Once their children reach Singapore, another group will take over and force them into prostitution. Not surprisingly, they are well guarded and their earnings seized from them.
Fernandez explained that trafficking in human persons includes exploitation of plantation workers and domestic help, among others. Working overtime without compensation, no health benefits, workers being underpaid or not being paid at all, workers being forced to also work without compensation at the homes of the employer’s family members and relatives all constitute trafficking in human persons.
Many errant employers, according to Tenaganita, claim that they had spent a small fortune on their workers to bring them over from various other countries and "therefore the workers are indebted to us."
"This needs to be addressed. We are violating their rights as human beings and exploiting them to the maximum," stressed Fernandez.
The reference point is the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 1997 which Malaysia passed in double quick time after the country was placed in Tier Three by the United States State Department following reports of trafficking in persons.
Currently, Malaysia is in Tier 2.5 - not doing enough to contain human trafficking - and has yo-yoed between Tier 2 – on the watchlist - and Tier 3. Trafficking is distinguished from smuggling of migrants. While trafficking may include a complex organisation of contracts, smuggling of people refers solely to unlawful border-crossing services.
Under the law, those convicted of trafficking in persons are liable to a minimum three years jail, not exceeding 20 years in jail and may be fined anything between RM50,000 and RM500,000. So far, only two persons have been charged. This includes one whose case has not been heard yet and another who has been jailed for eight years.
Malaysia is also a party to the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The Convention has two important protocols on human trafficking.
Media must play its role
These points need to be taken note of by the media, said Fernandez.
"The media should play their role to educate the people that trafficking does exist in the country and something must be done to overcome the problem," she appealed.
In addition, Tenaganita wants a special unit formed by the authorities concerned to look into the matter, and enforcement personnel trained "so that they would know the law effectively and how to address the issues wisely."
While there are numerous estimates on the number of documented and undocumented migrant workers in Sabah and Malaysia, there are no estimates on trafficking in persons. The placement of migrant workers are merely categorised under the formal sector viz. construction, agriculture and plantation and informal sector i.e. domestic work, restaurants, cafes and karaoke bars.
Statistics cited at the meet show that of 119 cases of trafficking in foreign girls alone were detected in recent months, the majority of the victims rescued by migrant rights organisations and Tenaganita.
Some of the victims were discovered to be below 16 years, even as young as 13. The girls were rescued in Kota Kinabalu, Labuan, Sandakan and Keningau in Sabah and Limbang in Sarawak,
Chinese men from Kuala Lumpur with Filipina mistresses in Sabah appear to be one of the links in the trafficking chain in the state, as discovered in recent months by social activist Anne Keyworth who runs Bukit Harapan - a shelter for the under privileged, which has rescued young girls from forced prostitution.
The modus operandi was to bring young girls from Zamboanga in the poverty-stricken southern Philippines to Sandakan. They are later sold to 'agents' in the town, Tawau, Keningau. Kota Kinabalu and Labuan who, in turn, deal with syndicates in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia. There’s also a direct Zamboanga-Labuan link which goes on to Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.
Victimised Filipinas, for example, are fetched by taxi from their living quarters in Kota Kinabalu and other towns and cities to leading hotels to sleep with the clients of syndicates.
The meet comes closely on the heels of a Church study which indicate that there are somewhere between 30,000 and 320,000 trafficked persons in Sabah alone based on the official figures of 600,000 to 800,000 migrant workers in the state.
The study was part of the Cross-Border Counter-Trafficking Project 2008-2009. Tenaganita collaborated with the Church group in Kota Kinabalu, the Archdiocesan Human Development Committee (AHDC) on the human trafficking study. AHDC also worked closely with the Jakarta office of the ICMC on the study.
Included in the AHDC study is data from an ICMC assessment from August last year in Nunukan, an Indonesian island off Tawau. The assessment found that 5.1 percent of a random sampling of 360 persons interviewed, 80 percent women, were held in ‘slave-like’ conditions at least until their debts were settled, salary deductions as a punitive measure was common and violence was employed when workers tried to leave.
The assessment did not cover women forced into brothel-based prostitution or those working in the peripheries of the commercial sex sector such as beer promotion girls, bar hostesses, karaoke singers and masseurs.
The victims are not only from Malaysian Borneo but also from the Philippines, Sulawesi and other parts of Indonesia, Vietnam and even as far away as China and India.
This is the picture that emerges from an on-going two day workshop, Role of the Media in Countering Trafficking in Persons (TIP), which began yesterday in Kota Kinabalu. The workshop in which 20 journalists are taking part was jointly organised by Tenaganita, the International Catholic Migration Commission Jakarta and the Sabah Journalists Association.
Malaysia is not only a destination country, the meet has discovered, but "a source and transit country for trafficked persons including those forced into prostitution, sex slavery, sex vacations, labour, domestic servitude and adoption."
"The problem is that countries like Singapore have legalised prostitution. They do not see that anyone can be forced into prostitution. So, they are claiming there is no trafficking of sex slaves. Of course, we are challenging that claim," Tenaganita director Irene Fernandez told the meet.In Sabah, disclosed Fernandez, one of the modus operandi of the traffickers is to lure unsuspecting young people from the remote, interior and rural areas on the promise of jobs in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore or places in college in Peninsular Malaysia.
"Normally, the families would sell off their lands to put their children through college. Instead, they are brought to work in plantations under Felda schemes, for example," alleged Fernandez.
"They would eventually run away because of the workload. We have facilitated many to return home," she added.
The Singapore dimension
In the Singapore dimension, according to the discussions at the meet, recruitment agents or their runners would look for potential victims in interior locations like Keningau, Tambunan and Tenom.
These agents would even see the parents to convince them of good job opportunities for their children in Singapore. There are also agents who convince the parents to pay for the airfare, passport and work permits.
Once their children reach Singapore, another group will take over and force them into prostitution. Not surprisingly, they are well guarded and their earnings seized from them.
Fernandez explained that trafficking in human persons includes exploitation of plantation workers and domestic help, among others. Working overtime without compensation, no health benefits, workers being underpaid or not being paid at all, workers being forced to also work without compensation at the homes of the employer’s family members and relatives all constitute trafficking in human persons.
Many errant employers, according to Tenaganita, claim that they had spent a small fortune on their workers to bring them over from various other countries and "therefore the workers are indebted to us."
"This needs to be addressed. We are violating their rights as human beings and exploiting them to the maximum," stressed Fernandez.
The reference point is the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 1997 which Malaysia passed in double quick time after the country was placed in Tier Three by the United States State Department following reports of trafficking in persons.
Currently, Malaysia is in Tier 2.5 - not doing enough to contain human trafficking - and has yo-yoed between Tier 2 – on the watchlist - and Tier 3. Trafficking is distinguished from smuggling of migrants. While trafficking may include a complex organisation of contracts, smuggling of people refers solely to unlawful border-crossing services.
Under the law, those convicted of trafficking in persons are liable to a minimum three years jail, not exceeding 20 years in jail and may be fined anything between RM50,000 and RM500,000. So far, only two persons have been charged. This includes one whose case has not been heard yet and another who has been jailed for eight years.
Malaysia is also a party to the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. The Convention has two important protocols on human trafficking.
Media must play its role
These points need to be taken note of by the media, said Fernandez.
"The media should play their role to educate the people that trafficking does exist in the country and something must be done to overcome the problem," she appealed.
In addition, Tenaganita wants a special unit formed by the authorities concerned to look into the matter, and enforcement personnel trained "so that they would know the law effectively and how to address the issues wisely."
While there are numerous estimates on the number of documented and undocumented migrant workers in Sabah and Malaysia, there are no estimates on trafficking in persons. The placement of migrant workers are merely categorised under the formal sector viz. construction, agriculture and plantation and informal sector i.e. domestic work, restaurants, cafes and karaoke bars.
Statistics cited at the meet show that of 119 cases of trafficking in foreign girls alone were detected in recent months, the majority of the victims rescued by migrant rights organisations and Tenaganita.
Some of the victims were discovered to be below 16 years, even as young as 13. The girls were rescued in Kota Kinabalu, Labuan, Sandakan and Keningau in Sabah and Limbang in Sarawak,
Chinese men from Kuala Lumpur with Filipina mistresses in Sabah appear to be one of the links in the trafficking chain in the state, as discovered in recent months by social activist Anne Keyworth who runs Bukit Harapan - a shelter for the under privileged, which has rescued young girls from forced prostitution.
The modus operandi was to bring young girls from Zamboanga in the poverty-stricken southern Philippines to Sandakan. They are later sold to 'agents' in the town, Tawau, Keningau. Kota Kinabalu and Labuan who, in turn, deal with syndicates in Singapore and Peninsular Malaysia. There’s also a direct Zamboanga-Labuan link which goes on to Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.
Victimised Filipinas, for example, are fetched by taxi from their living quarters in Kota Kinabalu and other towns and cities to leading hotels to sleep with the clients of syndicates.
The meet comes closely on the heels of a Church study which indicate that there are somewhere between 30,000 and 320,000 trafficked persons in Sabah alone based on the official figures of 600,000 to 800,000 migrant workers in the state.
The study was part of the Cross-Border Counter-Trafficking Project 2008-2009. Tenaganita collaborated with the Church group in Kota Kinabalu, the Archdiocesan Human Development Committee (AHDC) on the human trafficking study. AHDC also worked closely with the Jakarta office of the ICMC on the study.
Included in the AHDC study is data from an ICMC assessment from August last year in Nunukan, an Indonesian island off Tawau. The assessment found that 5.1 percent of a random sampling of 360 persons interviewed, 80 percent women, were held in ‘slave-like’ conditions at least until their debts were settled, salary deductions as a punitive measure was common and violence was employed when workers tried to leave.
The assessment did not cover women forced into brothel-based prostitution or those working in the peripheries of the commercial sex sector such as beer promotion girls, bar hostesses, karaoke singers and masseurs.
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