Malaysia's new govt fails to halt human trafficking
Malaysia's new govt fails to halt human
trafficking
US report says Malaysia is making efforts to curb trafficking, but has prosecuted fewer cases compared to previous years
The United States has kept Malaysia on its watch
list of countries that do not meet minimum efforts for the elimination of human
trafficking.
The 2019 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report,
launched on June 20 by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said Malaysia’s
government had not demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the
previous year.
But the report noted that Malaysia's year-old
government led by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad had initiated an official
Royal Commission of Inquiry into the mass graves of human trafficking victims
at Wang Kelian near the border with Thailand.
"In general, the situation has not changed
in any significant way,” said Dobby Chew of human rights group Suara Rakyat
Malaysia. The report covers the 2018 calendar year during which Malaysia
changed government for the first time in its historywhen the Pakatan Harapan
(Alliance of Hope) coalition won a shock election victory over the Barisan
Nasional (National Front) grouping that had governed since independence.
"The Malaysian government is so occupied
with national politics but not taking real action to combat trafficking,” said
Zafar Ahmad Bin Abdul Ghani, president of the Myanmar Ethnic Rohingya Human
Rights Organization Malaysia.
The TIP report comes as the United Nations
estimates the global total of refugees or displaced people to be over 70
million, including around a million Rohingya who fled Myanmar, mostly to
Bangladesh, in the wake of brutal army reprisals for attacks by Rohingya
militants on border posts in 2016 and 2017.
Many Rohingya refugees tried to move on from vast
refugee camps in Bangladesh, counting Malaysia among their preferred
alternative destinations, but their plight leaves them vulnerable to
trafficking. “The traffickers continue to traffic Rohingya men, women and
children. I received complaints that many Rohingya women were trafficked to
Malaysia to be brides to Rohingya men in Malaysia,” said Abdul Ghani.
The Malaysian Human Rights Commission stated in
2018 that “refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia are also vulnerable to
trafficking because a lack of recognition of their status prevents them from
working legally in Malaysia. Most of them are often smuggled across the
border."
The TIP report said that though Malaysia is
making significant efforts to curb trafficking, it also prosecuted fewer cases
compared to previous years and stopped funding non-governmental organizations
that shelter victims. "The government is failing to protect human
trafficking victims,” said Ziaur Rahman, a Rohingya who in 2014 was kidnapped
by traffickers in Bangladesh who forced him onto a boat bound for Thailand from
where he was sold across the border into Malaysia. "Being a victim of
human trafficking, there is still no protection for me,” he said.
Trafficking victims are vulnerable to cruel forms
of exploitation, such as forced labor on plantations or in the commercial sex
industry. An estimated 212,000 people are trapped in modern slavery in
Malaysia, according to estimates by the Walk Free Foundation, an Australian NGO
and publisher of an annual Global Slavery Index.
Malaysia avoided demotion to the TIP report’s
bottom Tier 3 rung of countries, a grouping that includes China, Myanmar and
North Korea and which carries with it the possibility of penalties such as the
U.S. president opting to withhold “non-humanitarian, non-trade-related foreign
assistance.”
Vulnerable to exploitation
Malaysia's status in the TIP standings has
fluctuated in recent years. It was relegated to the lowest Tier 3 designation
in 2015, followed by successive upgrades to Tier 2 Watch List and Tier 2 before
being demoted again to Tier 2 Watch List in 2018.
While Malaysia’s relatively advanced economy
makes it a draw for migrants and refugees from less well-off neighbors, the
scale of its foreign worker population leaves huge numbers of people
potentially vulnerable to exploitation.
Around a fifth of Malaysia’s workforce is made up
of foreign workers, but with large numbers of undocumented migrants and
reported corruption in work permit approvals, many migrants are more vulnerable
to trafficking, according to the TIP report.
For James Chin, a Malaysian political analyst and
director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania, the current
government is more committed to tackling trafficking than its predecessor, but
it faces challenges with police reform.
"The problem is they inherited a corrupted
police and border force. It will take years to root out corruption,”
he said. A March 2019 report by the Malaysian
Human Rights Commission and Fortify Rights, a U.S. human rights organization,
alleged that the trafficking that culminated in the mass graves discovered in
2015 was facilitated by corrupt border officials.
The gruesome discoveries, thought to be the
remains of Bangladeshis and Rohingya from Myanmar, prompted international
outrage at Malaysia and Thailand for seemingly allowing traffickers to operate
across their borders.
The March report further alleged that obstruction
of justice may have occurred when police ordered the destruction of potential
evidence at the camp where the grave was discovered. During a June 17 hearing
at the Royal Commission of Inquiry, Arifin Zakaria, the former chief justice
who chairs the commission, chastised former police chief Khalid Abu Bakar over
delays in investigating the Wang Kelian site.
"When we find something, we must cordon off
the area and go to the crime scene to gather evidence. However, when you told
them to hold on, they never went into the site,” Zakaria said.
The TIP report also cited ongoing cases related
to people-smuggling networks allegedly involving 600 officials at Kuala Lumpur
International Airport as well as investigations of officials and police
officers for related offences elsewhere — cases that “remained ongoing at the
end of the reporting period.”
With Malaysian PM Mahathir attending a summit of
ASEAN leaders in Thailand from June 22-23, activists want governments to at
least try to address the plight of the Rohingya. "We are frustrated that
the United Nations and ASEAN are not taking real action to stop genocide.
Trafficking of Rohingya will continue unless we stop the Rohingya genocide,”
said Abdul Ghani.
