Radio Australia
Efforts in Thailand and Cambodia to combat human trafficking has been recognised in the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report released this week.
Cambodia has even moved from a watch list to a Tier 2 alongside Thailand.
Presenter: Bo Hill
Speakers: David Feingold, International Coordinator for HIV/AIDS and Trafficking, Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture, UNESCO Bangkok; Andrew Hunter, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers
HILL: Mark Lagon, the man in charge of the US State Department's Anti-trafficking unit, describes human trafficking as widespread, modern day slavery and says about 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. This year, Ambassador Lagon singled out the Thai shrimp processing industry for harsh criticism. Ambassador Lagon tells one Burmese woman's story, recruited to work in Thailand's shrimp industry.
LAGON: Desperate to leave her country, Aye Aye Wynn described her horror to me at finding herself locked in a factory compound in the middle of a jungle, prevented from leaving or calling family by phone, or even eating decently. She and her Burmese brethren weren't even paid.
HILL: He goes on to tell of how Aye Aye Wynn was beaten and chained up. David Feingold is international director for UNESCO's AIDS and Trafficking Project in Bangkok. He says most people who become victims of trafficking into Thailand are from Burma, coming across Thailand highly porous border. He says the government in Bangkok has made two major recent steps forward, however, to combat human trafficking. A nationality law now recognises a large number of formerly stateless people as Thai citizens, providing control and protection. The other new legislation is a recognition that men, like women and children, can also be victims of trafficking and will no longer be treated as illegal immigrants and charged. David Feingold says this corrects a major error in previous anti-trafficking law in Thailand.
FEINGOLD: It's particularly an important change when addressing issues of labour trafficking which have received far more attention in the US report this year then they had in previous years. Previously the nearly sole focus of the report was sexual trafficking which in fact is not the majority of trafficking in the world.
HILL: In neighbouring Cambodia, a national anti-trafficking task force was formed last year. New legislation governing the taskforce coordinates agencies, oversees a wide prevention program and gives police and law enforcement agencies greater powers. The US State Department has recognised the success, moving Cambodia off a watch list to Tier 2 on its global trafficking report. What the US State Department report fails to mention, however, is those who claim they have become victims of the new initiatives. The legislation has changed the legal definition of what is prostitution in Cambodia and now describes all sex work as trafficking or sexual exploitation. An industry which was once described as "a fixture of urban life in Cambodia" is now fighting forced detention, the mass closure of brothels and draconian police intervention such as using the possession of condoms as evidence of sex work. Phuong, a Phnom Penh sex worker, was interviewed for a video report produced by the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers. APNSW says she is just one of a number of victims of the new police powers.
VO: I got arrested in the park in front of the railway station. They took my watch and money. They took me to the station and they didn't beat me but they gang raped me, one after the other."
HILL: Andrew Hunter is from APNSW. He says the law is a violation of sex workers human rights, where even peer educators and union organisers can be arrested for human trafficking offences.
HUNTER: What's happened is there's been a mass closure of brothels across Cambodia which has led to huge numbers of sex workers being put out of work and large numbers of sex workers being sent to government and NGO rehabilitation centres against their choice. And large numbers of HIV positive sex workers are being sent to those centres where there's no medical care. In a lot of the centres there's massive human rights abuses - the guards are raping, and gang raping the women on arrival and in some cases regularly and daily.
HILL: Andrew Hunter says it is the US State Department's Anti-Trafficking report that lead to the persecution of sex workers in Cambodia.
HUNTER: Three years ago the draft legislation was tabled in Parliament, and the Women's Network for Unity here, the sex workers union, lead a campaign and met with the Prime Minister and got the legislation stopped. That lead to Cambodia being put on the US government watchlist in their Trafficking in Persons Report and since then there's been huge pressure from the US government under the threat of sanctions to actually pass this law.
Efforts in Thailand and Cambodia to combat human trafficking has been recognised in the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report released this week.
Cambodia has even moved from a watch list to a Tier 2 alongside Thailand.
Presenter: Bo Hill
Speakers: David Feingold, International Coordinator for HIV/AIDS and Trafficking, Office of the Regional Advisor for Culture, UNESCO Bangkok; Andrew Hunter, Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers
HILL: Mark Lagon, the man in charge of the US State Department's Anti-trafficking unit, describes human trafficking as widespread, modern day slavery and says about 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. This year, Ambassador Lagon singled out the Thai shrimp processing industry for harsh criticism. Ambassador Lagon tells one Burmese woman's story, recruited to work in Thailand's shrimp industry.
LAGON: Desperate to leave her country, Aye Aye Wynn described her horror to me at finding herself locked in a factory compound in the middle of a jungle, prevented from leaving or calling family by phone, or even eating decently. She and her Burmese brethren weren't even paid.
HILL: He goes on to tell of how Aye Aye Wynn was beaten and chained up. David Feingold is international director for UNESCO's AIDS and Trafficking Project in Bangkok. He says most people who become victims of trafficking into Thailand are from Burma, coming across Thailand highly porous border. He says the government in Bangkok has made two major recent steps forward, however, to combat human trafficking. A nationality law now recognises a large number of formerly stateless people as Thai citizens, providing control and protection. The other new legislation is a recognition that men, like women and children, can also be victims of trafficking and will no longer be treated as illegal immigrants and charged. David Feingold says this corrects a major error in previous anti-trafficking law in Thailand.
FEINGOLD: It's particularly an important change when addressing issues of labour trafficking which have received far more attention in the US report this year then they had in previous years. Previously the nearly sole focus of the report was sexual trafficking which in fact is not the majority of trafficking in the world.
HILL: In neighbouring Cambodia, a national anti-trafficking task force was formed last year. New legislation governing the taskforce coordinates agencies, oversees a wide prevention program and gives police and law enforcement agencies greater powers. The US State Department has recognised the success, moving Cambodia off a watch list to Tier 2 on its global trafficking report. What the US State Department report fails to mention, however, is those who claim they have become victims of the new initiatives. The legislation has changed the legal definition of what is prostitution in Cambodia and now describes all sex work as trafficking or sexual exploitation. An industry which was once described as "a fixture of urban life in Cambodia" is now fighting forced detention, the mass closure of brothels and draconian police intervention such as using the possession of condoms as evidence of sex work. Phuong, a Phnom Penh sex worker, was interviewed for a video report produced by the Asia-Pacific Network of Sex Workers. APNSW says she is just one of a number of victims of the new police powers.
VO: I got arrested in the park in front of the railway station. They took my watch and money. They took me to the station and they didn't beat me but they gang raped me, one after the other."
HILL: Andrew Hunter is from APNSW. He says the law is a violation of sex workers human rights, where even peer educators and union organisers can be arrested for human trafficking offences.
HUNTER: What's happened is there's been a mass closure of brothels across Cambodia which has led to huge numbers of sex workers being put out of work and large numbers of sex workers being sent to government and NGO rehabilitation centres against their choice. And large numbers of HIV positive sex workers are being sent to those centres where there's no medical care. In a lot of the centres there's massive human rights abuses - the guards are raping, and gang raping the women on arrival and in some cases regularly and daily.
HILL: Andrew Hunter says it is the US State Department's Anti-Trafficking report that lead to the persecution of sex workers in Cambodia.
HUNTER: Three years ago the draft legislation was tabled in Parliament, and the Women's Network for Unity here, the sex workers union, lead a campaign and met with the Prime Minister and got the legislation stopped. That lead to Cambodia being put on the US government watchlist in their Trafficking in Persons Report and since then there's been huge pressure from the US government under the threat of sanctions to actually pass this law.
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