Taiwan was given “Tier 1” status by the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which was released on Thursday, the 10th consecutive year that the nation has achieved the report’s highest ranking in terms of government efforts to combat human trafficking.
The report, based on findings from April 1 last year to March 31, has four tiers, with “Tier 1” being “countries whose governments fully meet the [US’] Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s [TVPA] minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking.”
Taipei met the minimum standards for the elimination of human trafficking stipulated in the act and has demonstrated “serious and sustained” efforts, including investigating significantly more traffickers and labor recruitment agencies than in previous years; conducting for the first time random inspections of fishing vessels at sea; repatriating an increased number of foreigners affected by trafficking; and amending legislation to improve protections for migrant workers, the report added.
However, the disconnected scope of the Ministry of Labor’s and the Fisheries Agency’s powers, coupled with insufficient inspection protocols, continued to impede efforts to address forced labor on Taiwan-flagged or Taiwanese-owned fishing vessels in its “highly vulnerable” distant-water fishing fleet, it said.
Authorities detained and charged dozens of people even though they had been internationally identified as victims of forced criminality, the report said.
The nation should improve efforts to prosecute and convict traffickers; impose adequate penalties for people convicted of human-trafficking offenses — including significant prison terms; increase inspections; prosecute senior crew members and owners of Taiwanese fishing vessels in the distant-water fleet suspected of forced labor when appropriate; conduct comprehensive, victim-centered interviews during portside and at-sea vessel inspections to ascertain whether foreign fishing crew members have been subjected to forced labor — with interviews to take place away from the main vessels and senior crew members, and conducted with the assistance of a qualified interpreter, the report said.
China was given “Tier 3” status, although it acknowledged the Chinese government’s efforts to seek accountability for officials complicit in commercial sex crimes that might involve trafficking, and to tackle fake or forced marriages, which are often associated with the trafficking of women and girls.
Tier 3 is the worst level, indicating “countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so,” with China given that status due in large part to the Chinese government’s oppression of ethno-religious groups.
The report cited internment camps in Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is allegedly holding hundreds of thousands of Muslims captive, and allegations of similar treatment of Tibetans.
Chinese authorities have detained women on suspicion of prostitution, sometimes for months, without screening for trafficking, and often forcibly returned foreigners to their traffickers after they escaped and reported abuses, the report said.
It called on China to end forced labor at government and non-governmental facilities converted into government detention centers; to abolish arbitrary detention and forced labor, and to immediately release such detainees; and to cease discriminatory hiring and targeted-displacement policies that put Muslims and others at risk of trafficking.
Other Tier 1 nations included the US, the UK, Japan, France, Canada and Sweden, while Tier 3 countries included Myanmar, Bhutan, Russia, Cuba, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The Ministry of the Interior yesterday said that Taiwan last year repatriated 120 people affected by trafficking and indicted 112 people in human trafficking cases, both record-low results.
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