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Analysis: Nation unlikely to leave trafficking list: experts

"Prosecutors tell me they can't charge traffickers for buying and selling people because there isn't any evidence of contracts for such transactions. So they go for lighter sentences."

Liao Yuan-hao, National Chengchi University law professor

The government has broken up 80 human-trafficking rings this year, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday amid speculation that the crackdown might fall short of convincing Washington to remove Taiwan from a key "watch list" -- scheduled for release today -- for countries plagued by human trafficking.

The American Institute in Taiwan is set to announce the release today of the US' annual Trafficking in Persons report, which has listed Taiwan on its "Tier 2 Watch List" since 2005 for failing to tackle local human trafficking, institute officials said yesterday, refusing further comment.

"It's time to take us off the list," said NIA deputy director Steve Wu (吳學燕). "We've accomplished much in the past year."

The Ministry of the Interior on Monday issued a statement lauding immigration and police authorities for netting 626 traffickers and dismantling 80 trafficking rings since January.

Improved efficiency

"The effectiveness of [our national immigration and police agencies] in breaking up the rings is 16 times better than what it was last year," Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) said in the statement.

Experts on immigration trends and policy, however, are skeptical about the nation's odds.

Authorities lack the resources to stamp out trafficking, likely leading to the nation's continued inclusion on the watch list, they said.

PROTECT OR PROSECUTE?

Among the top reasons why Taiwan "should remain on the list" is its lack of guidelines on how to handle trafficking victims, said Le My-nga of the Taoyuan-based Vietnamese Migrant Workers and Brides Office.

"There's no rehabilitation or protection for victims; there aren't any incentives for them to help authorities root out trafficking rings," Le said.

"Victims are still treated as criminals," she added.

US Deputy Assistant Attorney General Grace Becker, while touring the nation in April, urged Taiwan to treat its foreign sex workers as rape victims.

Protecting -- not prosecuting -- such "victims," Becker had said, often leads to their divulging information allowing authorities to wipe out entire smuggling rings.

But "is the NIA really qualified to take on sexual assault cases?" Le asked.

"Foreign affairs police [who are now immigration officials] have to put on social workers' caps -- it just doesn't work," she said.

Inaugurated in January, the NIA subsumed immigration-related police officers countrywide. But its policing culture, Le said, gets in the way of fostering a "victim-centered" approach and helping foreign prostitutes, as Becker had advocated.

Confusion over how to treat trafficked sex workers also affects the legal system, as prosecutors, ignorant to the true nature of trafficking, typically seek light sentences for indicted traffickers, National Chengchi University law professor Liao Yuan-hao (廖元豪) said.

"Prosecutors tell me they can't charge traffickers for buying and selling people because there isn't any evidence of contracts for such transactions," Liao said.

"So they go for lighter sentences," he said.

To make matters worse, the legal and conceptual fog surrounding trafficking is fueling inter-agency "turf wars" as agencies are left to their own devices on how to process trafficked people, Le said.

A woman trafficked here on a visa based on a fake marriage, for example, can skip across various agencies' jurisdictions after winding up in a sweat shop and then getting raped, Le said.

"We've had cases like that," she said. "The woman's illegal entry involves the NIA, while her being forced to toil before being raped means the Council of Labor Affairs and the social welfare department, respectively, should intervene."

"Each agency has its own way of treating her, and that creates confusion," she added.

Overlapping jurisdictions between the NIA and the National Police Agency (NPA) have proved especially thorny after the Cabinet doled out quotas in January to both agencies to crack down on human-trafficking rings -- essentially pitting the two agencies against each other, Wu told the Taipei Times in April.

"Separating [the two agencies'] duties has created problems," Liao said.

Wu said that the overlapping duties touched off a "conspiracy" in which the NPA tried to "sabotage" the NIA by unloading its "dirty cops" on the newly formed agency without informing it of their background.

After the immigration agency took credit in March for busting a ring the NPA had hoped to dismantle for its quota, the police agency alerted prosecutors about its former crooked police officers, now employed by the NIA, setting off a corruption scandal that gave the NIA a black eye, Wu said.

`A bit angry'

"They [the NPA] were a bit angry," Wu said yesterday of the incident. "So they gave us some trouble."

Such infighting, critics said, is the latest obstacle among many facing Taiwan as it "reinvents the wheel" in its approach to human trafficking and tries to get itself off a watch list that includes Saudi Arabia, China and Libya.

"Taiwan has been on Tier 2 for two years," Le said. "But the problems associated with trafficking here have festered for more than a decade."

Also see story:
UK report exposes trade in children for sex, drugs

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