Report: Human slavery thrives in China
WASHINGTON — China is among the world’s worst offenders for allowing modern slavery to thrive within its borders, according to a strongly worded State Department report released Tuesday.
In its annual assessment of global efforts to end human trafficking — with an estimated 20 million people remaining in bondage around the world — the State Department dropped China to the lowest tier of its ranking this year, as it did with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo.
Those three nations joined 20 others already in that lowest designation, including Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.
The report found that prosecutions for various forms of human trafficking — which include sex trafficking, including of children; forced and bonded labor; domestic servitude; and the unlawful use of child soldiers — dropped by nearly a quarter between 2015 and 2016, the first time the world had seen such a significant drop in recent years.
“Ending human trafficking is among the top priorities of the Trump administration,” Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter and a key adviser, said in an event held Tuesday morning at the State Department to formally release the 17th annual report on the issue.
Trump singled out child sex trafficking. “On a personal level, as a mother, this is much more than a policy priority,” she said.
Trump joined Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to release the report, and he spoke with a passion rarely displayed during his early tenure in public office.
“It is our hope that the 21st century will be the last century of human trafficking,” he said.
Tillerson had previously cautioned that values cannot be an obstacle to national security or economic interests. But, on Tuesday, he linked the problem of human trafficking to his top priority, ending North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Between 50,000 and 80,000 North Koreans are forced to work overseas, mostly in China and Russia, he said, and their wages are used by the North Korean government to fund its illicit weapons programs.
“Supply chains creating many products that Americans enjoy may be utilizing forced labor,” Tillerson said while Trump sat nearby. Trump’s shoe brand has come under criticism for its use of Chinese labor as well as the disappearance of three labor activists investigating conditions at the plants making her shoes.
Tillerson was criticized in March for failing to attend the release of the department’s annual human rights report, in what was considered a rare breach of a long-standing tradition by secretaries of state.
The report released Tuesday noted significant improvements in efforts to combat trafficking in 26 countries, including Afghanistan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Ukraine.
Tillerson noted that Afghanistan was upgraded in part for its efforts to crack down on powerful male leaders sexually abusing boys. Malaysia was upgraded because of a significant increase in prosecutions for such offenses as employers who impound workers’ passports.