The US yesterday put allies Singapore and Thailand as well as Vietnam on a human trafficking watch list, accusing them of failing to prevent women from being forced into prostitution.
The move opens the way for the US to cut off some civilian assistance, although it usually functions as a symbolic means to pressure countries to take action.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has made women’s and children’s rights a signature issue, called human trafficking a “terrible crime” as she presented the State Department’s annual report.
PHOTO: AFP
“All of us have a responsibility to bring this practice to an end,” she said.
The report estimated that 12.3 million people were the victims of trafficking last year and this year, although it said there has been progress in the past decade.
The US State Department added a number of Asian nations to its watch list — Afghanistan, Brunei, Laos, Maldives, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Bangladesh, China, India, Micronesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka remained on the list, unchanged from a year earlier.
North Korea, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea remained at the bottom level of countries that do not even meet the minimum standards on human trafficking.
Explaining the downgrade for Singapore, the report said that some women from China, the Philippines and Thailand are tricked into coming to the city-state with promises of legitimate employment and coerced into the sex trade.
The report said that while Singapore launched “some significant new steps” against trafficking, there were no “quantifiable indicators” that the government was identifying more victims or prosecuting more culprits.
The State Department said that Thailand was a source, destination and transit point for trafficking, with ethnic minorities and citizens of neighboring countries at particular risk of sexual abuse or forced labor.
Senator Jim Webb, who heads the Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asia, had made an unusually open appeal not to place Thailand on the watch list.
Webb visited Bangkok this month and said US embassy staff disagreed with the intended downgrade as it could curb assistance for democracy and human rights programs in the wake of the kingdom’s political violence.
The downgrade occurs “at a time when this type of aide is desperately needed to bolster political reforms in Thailand and to promote political stability,” Webb said last week in a letter to Clinton.
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