Australia plans to introduce new human trafficking laws that set penalties of up to 20 years in jail for smuggling a child, the government said on Thursday, days after being named in a US trafficking report.
The US State Department's annual Trafficking in Persons Report for the first time cited Australia as a destination for Chinese and Southeast Asian women trafficked into the sex trade, putting it on the same level as France, Germany, Morocco and Colombia.
"It's a vile trade and must be stamped out," Australian Minister for Family and Community Services Kay Patterson said.
The sex slavery trade in Australia hit the spotlight last year with an inquest into the death of a 27-year-old Thai woman, Puongtong Simaplee, who choked to death on her vomit in a Sydney detention center after 15 years as a prostitute in Australia.
Project Respect, a group that represents women brought to Australia as sex slaves, believes there could be up to 1,000 such women in the country at any one time.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell estimated this week that up to 800,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked internationally each year.
Australia, which says police are investigating 20 cases of human trafficking, plans to introduce new legislation in parliament within the next few weeks that will include penalties of up to 20 years for trafficking a child or 12 years for trafficking an adult using threat, force and deception.
The legislation is also designed to protect women recruited to work in the sex industry who find themselves subjected to exploitation when they arrive.
The US trafficking report said many of the women who agree to work in both legal and illegal Australian brothels were coerced into debt bondage and sexual servitude.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
RSS