A comprehensive anti-human trafficking law must include a clear definition of the issue as well as a mechanism that provides victims with care and protection in a dignified manner, a group of activists said yesterday at a public hearing on the draft of a statute on combating human trafficking.
According to the draft proposed by an alliance of non-governmental organizations combating human trafficking, the definition of human trafficking is any performance of labor that is derived from coercion, exploitation, unlawful imprisonment, illegal debt bondage, drugs, hypnosis, fraud, surveillance, detainment of important documents and threats.
Illegal extraction of human organs and the forced sex trade are also included under the umbrella of human trafficking, the draft states.
Shen Mei-chen (沈美真), a lawyer and president of the Women’s Rescue Foundation, said the law had to assert that the victims of trafficking should be treated in a dignified and humane manner if they are apprehended by the authorities.
They should also be allowed to work if they are asked to stay in Taiwan while awaiting trial, Shen said.
“The law must provide these people with enough incentives to stay in Taiwan to testify against their abusers. They need to know they would not encounter any risk by taking their aggressors to court,” Shen said, stressing that Taiwanese authorities, especially the judiciary, had to be educated on how to handle human trafficking cases in a professional and sensitive manner.
Reverend Peter O’Neill from Hsinchu Catholic Diocese’s Migrant and New Immigrants Service Center also urged the government to punish Taiwanese abusers and brokers, and not just the illegal foreign workers.
O’Neill said that some people are being detained in Taiwan against their will to testify in court even though they wanted to go home.
“The forced detention completely violates UN human rights protocols,” he said.
“We also need to determine the reason why some workers are here illegally,” said Wang Chuan-ping (王娟萍), executive director of the Labor Rights Association.
“Some people came to Taiwan with legal documents, but later became illegal foreigners because of their Taiwanese employers or brokers. We cannot stereotype all illegal workers as criminals without getting to the root of the issue,” Wang said.
The Collective of Sex Workers and Supporters advocated including sex workers in the laborer category, but many of the activists disagreed with the suggestion because the global trend is to treat the two subjects as separate.
Taiwan has for the past two years been placed on the “Tier 2” list in the US’ annual Trafficking in Persons Report for failing to comply with the “minimum standards to eliminate trafficking.”
The report recommended that Taiwan pass and implement a comprehensive anti-trafficking law prohibiting and punishing all severe forms of trafficking and extend the full protection of the Labor Standards Law to all categories of foreign labor, including domestic helpers and caregivers.
Yesterday’s public hearing was the first of a series, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said, promising that the draft would receive bipartisan support in the legislature.
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