Malaysia critics fear US going soft on trafficking

WASHINGTON: Human rights advocates have expressed alarm over a report that the US State Department might declare that Malaysia’s record on human trafficking has improved since last year, even though, they say, its record has not.

The possible upgrade of Malaysia’s trafficking designation comes after Congress approved legislation last month that included a veiled criticism of Malaysia’s human-trafficking record.

That language was inserted into the law by Senator Robert Menendez. It gives the president expanded trade negotiating powers but prevents the United States from striking trade deals with countries, namely Malaysia, that have the worst human-trafficking records.

“They appear to be giving Malaysia a sweetheart deal,” Mr Menendez, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a call with reporters.

The State Department is expected to release its annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” next week. The report organises countries into tiers based on their trafficking records, and last year Malaysia was placed in Tier 3, for countries with the worst records on human trafficking. The list included Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe. The report described conditions under which migrants were subjected to forced labour and women and children were coerced into the sex trade.

“The government of Malaysia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,” last year’s report said.

Human rights advocates expressed shock that the State Department might report that Malaysia’s efforts against trafficking had improved.

“This is a country with a major problem in human trafficking and forced labour,” said John Sifton, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

“Malaysia has done very little to combat this scourge,” he added.

Officials at the Malaysian Embassy in Washington were unavailable to comment on Friday.

A State Department spokesman, John Kirby, declined to discuss the report’s contents during his daily briefing on Thursday. “Work continues on it here at the State Department,” Mr Kirby said. “And so it would be very premature for me to get into any characterisation of what may or may not be in that report.”

In April, The Malaysian Insider website, reported that the US ambassador there, Joseph Yun, said Malaysia’s government needed to do more to combat trafficking.

In May, the Malaysian authorities discovered a mass gravesite along the country’s border with Thailand. The graves are believed to contain the remains of migrants being smuggled into Malaysia.

Despite Malaysia’s continued problems with human trafficking, a related bill in the House of Representatives on customs enforcement includes an exemption for countries such as Malaysia to participate in the Pacific trade deal despite a poor record on trafficking.

The measure, if approved, would allow the Barack Obama administration to move forward on the trade deal as long as Malaysia was taking verifiable, concrete steps to combat human trafficking.

In June, Malaysia’s lower house of Parliament passed a measure to strengthen its anti-trafficking laws. This may be considered enough to qualify for the exception in the customs bill.

But Charles Santiago, an MP, expressed doubts about Parliament’s amendment in a commentary on Malaysian news website, Free Malaysia Today: “We are yet to know how the government has moved to effectively implement the supposed framework.”