Human trafficking in Malaysia

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Malaysia is a destination and a source and transit country for women and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced prostitution and for men, women, and children who are in conditions of forced labour. [1]

Contents

The majority of trafficking victims are foreign workers from Indonesia, Nepal, India, Thailand, China, the Philippines, Burma, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam, some of whom subsequently encounter forced labour, debt bondage and wage slavery at the hands of their employers, employment agents, or informal labour recruiters.

Overview

While many of Malaysia's trafficking offenders are individual businessmen, large organised crime syndicates are also behind some of the trafficking of foreigners in Malaysia. A significant number of young women are recruited for work in Malaysian restaurants and hotels, some of whom migrate through the use of “Guest Relations Officer” visas, but subsequently are coerced into Malaysia's commercial sex trade. Such women from China are nicknamed "China Dolls". [2] Many Malaysian labour outsourcing companies recruited excess workers, who were then often subject to conditions of forced labour. Some Malaysian citizens are trafficked internally and abroad to Hong Kong, France, and the United Kingdom for commercial sexual exploitation. There were approximately two million documented migrant workers in Malaysia in 2009, and an additional estimated 1.9 million who were undocumented.[ citation needed ]

Many migrant workers in plantations, construction sites, textile factories, and employed as domestic workers throughout Malaysia experienced restrictions on movement, deceit and fraud in wages, passport confiscation, or debt bondage, which are practices indicative of trafficking. Some Malaysian employers reportedly did not pay their foreign domestic workers three to six months’ wages to recoup recruitment agency charges, making them vulnerable to trafficking. Refugees were particularly vulnerable to trafficking, and Malaysians from rural communities and indigenous groups were also vulnerable. The People's Volunteer Corps (RELA) continued to conduct raids targeting illegal migrant communities and detained refugees, asylum seekers, and trafficking victims along with allegedly illegal migrants and foreign prostitutes. [3] Some trafficking victims were locked up in warehouses or brothels. The Indonesian and Malaysian governments have not amended or replaced a 2006 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) covering the employment of Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia, which authorises Malaysian employers to confiscate and hold the passports of domestic employees. [4]

Malaysia, Thailand and Venezuela were listed in the third and lowest tier of the US Department of State's 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report. The country has made little progress to combat the exploitation of foreign migrant workers subjected to forced labour and those recruited under false pretenses and coerced into sex work. [5] Rohingya refugees, seeking a better life in Malaysia, are frequently victimised by human traffickers who confine, beat and starve them and demand ransoms from their families. [6] Many Filipinas, promised good jobs in other countries by brokers in the Philippines, have been trafficked to Malaysia and are vulnerable to detention by Malaysian authorities for illegal entry. [7] Vietnamese and Chinese traffickers have shifted their prostitution rings to Malaysia, making Vietnamese women the largest number of foreign prostitutes in the country followed by Cambodian women. [8] [9] Traffickers usually offer victims good-paying jobs in Malaysia; when they meet a trafficker (posing as a manager), they are imprisoned, raped and forced into sex work. [10] [11] Traffickers kidnapped children, maimed them and used them to beg in the streets of Kuala Lumpur. [12] [13]

Malaysia is an cheap labour electrical-parts manufacturing centre, and large companies such as Panasonic and Samsung (as well as the McDonald's fast-food chain) were accused of poor treatment of workers. [14] [15] Cambodian housemaids have reportedly been poorly treated, [16] [17] and a Cambodian maid detained in a Malaysian immigration centre said that she saw three Cambodian and Vietnamese women die after severe abuse; Thai, Indonesian and Laotian prisoners were also reportedly abused. [18] In 2016, a Malaysian couple were sentenced to death for starving their Cambodian maid to death. [19] [20]

Prosecution

The Government of Malaysia has made some progress in law enforcement efforts against sex trafficking during the reporting period, and limited progress in prosecuting and convicting offenders of labour trafficking. Malaysian law prohibits all forms of human trafficking through its 2007 anti-trafficking law, which prescribes penalties that are commensurate with those of other serious offences, such as rape. During the reporting period, the government convicted three sex trafficking offenders and reported initiating 180 trafficking-related investigations and filing 123 charges against 69 individuals, though it is unclear how many of these cases were for actual trafficking. In January 2010, authorities identified their first labour trafficking case in the fisheries industry when the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency intercepted Thai fishing boats off the coast of Sarawak and arrested five Thai traffickers; the case remains pending.

While NGOs reported several potential labour trafficking cases to the government, authorities did not report any related arrests or investigations. Authorities initiated a review of the licenses of the 277 companies that are authorised to act as labour recruiters in Malaysia. The government did not report any criminal prosecutions of employers who subjected workers to conditions of forced labour or labour recruiters who used deceptive practices and debt bondage to compel migrant workers into involuntary servitude. Despite a public statement by a senior official highlighting the right of workers to hold their own passports, the government continued to allow for the confiscation of passports by employers of migrant workers, and did not prosecute any employers who confiscated passports or travel documents of migrant workers or confined them to the workplace. In September 2009, the Home Minister announced that a new MOU being negotiated between Malaysia and Indonesia would not allow confiscation of passports of migrant workers, but the 2006 MOU authorising such confiscation has not yet been amended or replaced.

Authorities did not take criminal action against Peoples Volunteer Corps (RELA) volunteers who physically threatened and abused migrant workers and extorted money from them, despite continued reports of these abuses. In response to credible reports of government officials’ direct involvement in a human trafficking network along the Malaysia-Thailand border outlined in a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report, five immigration officials were arrested for alleged involvement in a trafficking ring that took Burmese migrants to Thailand for sale to trafficking syndicates. However, officials have only lodged criminal charges under the Anti-Trafficking Act against one of the officers, and the case against him is still pending. Some observers report that corruption plays a role in the trafficking of foreign migrant workers, particularly with regard to officials’ authorising excess recruitment by Malaysian outsourcing companies, despite assurances from officials that practice had been reduced by regulations implemented in July 2009 that require outsourcing companies to demonstrate their need for each worker recruited. Reports also indicate that collusion between police and trafficking offenders sometimes leads to offenders escaping arrest and punishment. Nevertheless, there were no officials convicted of trafficking-related complicity during the reporting period.

Protection

The government made minimal progress in protecting victims of trafficking during the reporting period. Efforts to identify and protect both sex and labour trafficking victims remained inadequate overall. The government did not report the identification of any Malaysian victims of trafficking. In January, officials rescued and identified 16 male forced labour victims from four deep-sea trawlers off the coast of Sarawak – the first trafficking victims in the fisheries industry identified by the government. The Ministry for Women, Family, and Community Development continued to run two trafficking “shelters” for women and children and opened a third in July 2009, which detained suspected and confirmed foreign sex trafficking victims involuntarily for 90 days until they were deported to their home countries, per Malaysian law. During the reporting period, the government also opened its first two shelters designed to house male victims of trafficking, although these shelters also detained victims involuntarily until they were deported. The government's policy of detaining trafficking victims against their will provided a disincentive for victims and their advocates from bringing cases to the government's attention.

During the reporting period, 139 women and children were certified as victims and detained in the shelters. An additional 232 individuals were given initial protective orders, but were ultimately determined by the government to not be victims of trafficking and were deported, though officials acknowledge that some of these may have been trafficking victims who were reluctant to co-operate with law enforcement proceedings. During the year, the government reportedly made some improvements in its screening to identify individuals possessing UNHCR cards or possessing traits of trafficking victims to separate them from the illegal migrant populations. The government continued to use RELA volunteers in indiscriminate raids to identify illegal migrants, some of whom were reportedly trafficking victims. Several foreign embassies reported that they were sometimes not informed by Malaysian authorities of the presence of their nationals in trafficking shelters, and at times, authorities would deny these diplomatic missions access to their citizens once their presence was known. Government shelters resembled immigration detention centres, by denying victims basic freedoms, and these facilities did not employ medical officers, trained psychologists, or trained victim counselors. Some victims were locked in rooms within the shelters.

While NGO trafficking shelters provide resources that government shelters do not, the government does not provide any financial assistance to NGOs, and requires all identified victims to reside in its own shelters. The anti-trafficking law provides immunity to trafficking victims for immigration offences such as illegal entry, unlawful presence, and possession of false travel documents, but victims continue to be detained and deported, as they would be if they were arrested for illegal immigration. Malaysian law does not provide immunity for criminal acts committed as a result of being trafficked. In January 2010, a 14-year-old Indonesian girl working as a domestic worker in Malaysia was identified by authorities as a trafficking victim. Authorities prosecuted the girl for theft from her employer, and did not prosecute the girl's employer for violating child labour laws. The government issued guidelines and provided training on the identification and processing of suspected trafficking victims, but did not develop or implement formal procedures to proactively identify victims of labour trafficking. The government treated victims of trafficking as illegal aliens and turned them over to immigration authorities for deportation after they provided evidence to prosecutors. Victims are required by law to assist in the prosecution of trafficking offenders, but the lack of victim protection or any incentives for victim assistance in investigations and prosecutions remained a significant impediment to successful prosecutions.

Aside from a standard 90-day stay in one of its shelters, the government did not provide other legal alternatives to the removal of victims to countries where they may face hardship or retribution. Although victims may file a civil suit against exploiters, their lack of any option to legally work during the consideration of their suit discouraged such attempts. Some foreign governments expressed concern about the lack of legal protections in place for foreign workers in Malaysia, particularly those subjected to involuntary servitude. Some unidentified victims, including children, were routinely processed as illegal migrants and held in prisons or immigration detention centres prior to deportation.

Response

According to the United States, Malaysia is not doing enough to curtail human trafficking. In June 2014 in its annual Trafficking in Persons report, the United States said it had lowered Malaysia's ranking to Tier 3, the lowest grade possible. [4] [21] The Government of Malaysia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Because the assessment that the government had made significant efforts is based in part on its commitments to undertake actions over the coming year – notably greater implementation of Malaysia's anti-trafficking law against labour trafficking – U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 2" in 2017. [22] [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

Illegal immigration to Malaysia is the cross-border movement of people to Malaysia under conditions where official authorisation is lacking, breached, expired, fraudulent, or irregular. The cross-border movement of workers has become well-established in Southeast Asia, with Malaysia a major labour-receiving country and Indonesia and the Philippines the region's main labour-sending states. Managing cross-border migration has become an issue of increasing concern in Malaysia and its international relations.

According to the U.S. Government's Trafficking in Person's (TIP) Report, Singapore is a destination country for foreign victims trafficked for the purpose of labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Over the years, victims of trafficking in Singapore have come from many countries throughout Asia such as India, Thailand, the People's Republic of China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma and Malaysia. Many of these people travel to Singapore voluntarily for work in different industries such as construction, manufacturing, or commercial sex. The use of deception about working conditions, debt bondage, the unlawful confiscation of travel documents, confinement and/or physical or sexual abuse is utilized by traffickers to force victims into involuntary servitude. The U.S. TIP Report also notes a small quantity of Singaporeans engaging in and/or promoting child sex tourism abroad. The U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in Tier 1 in 2020.

Taiwan is primarily a destination for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. It is also a source of women trafficked to Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Women and girls from the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.) and Southeast Asian countries are trafficked to Taiwan through fraudulent marriages, deceptive employment offers, and illegal smuggling for sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many trafficking victims are workers from rural areas of Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, employed through recruitment agencies and brokers to perform low skilled work in Taiwan’s construction, fishing, and manufacturing industries, or to work as domestic servants. Such workers are often charged high job placement and service fees, up to $14,000, resulting in substantial debt that labor brokers or employers use as a tool for involuntary servitude. Many foreign workers remain vulnerable to trafficking because legal protections, oversight by authorities and enforcement efforts are inadequate.

According to the United States Department of State, "Thailand is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking." Thailand's relative prosperity attracts migrants from neighboring countries who flee conditions of poverty and, in the case of Burma, military repression. Significant illegal migration to Thailand presents traffickers with opportunities to coerce or defraud undocumented migrants into involuntary servitude or sexual exploitation. Police who investigated reaching high-profile authorities also received death threats in 2015.

Vietnam is primarily a source country for women and children trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Women and children are trafficked to the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C), Cambodia, Thailand, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Macau for sexual exploitation. Vietnamese women are trafficked to the P.R.C., Taiwan, and the Republic of Korea via fraudulent or misrepresented marriages for commercial exploitation or forced labor. Vietnam is also a source country for men and women who migrate willingly and legally for work in the construction, fishing, or manufacturing sectors in Malaysia, Taiwan, P.R.C., Thailand, and the Middle East but subsequently face conditions of forced labor or debt bondage. Vietnam is a destination country for Cambodian children trafficked to urban centers for forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Vietnam has an internal trafficking problem with women and children from rural areas trafficked to urban centers for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Vietnam is increasingly a destination for child sex tourism, with perpetrators from Japan, the Republic of Korea, the P.R.C., Taiwan, the UK, Australia, Europe, and the U.S. In 2007, an Australian non-governmental organization (NGO) uncovered 80 cases of commercial sexual exploitation of children by foreign tourists in the Sa Pa tourist area of Vietnam alone.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People's Republic of China is a destination and transit territory for men and women trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor.

Human trafficking in India, although illegal under Indian law, remains a significant problem. People are frequently illegally trafficked through India for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced/bonded labour. Although no reliable study of forced and bonded labour has been completed, NGOs estimate this problem affects 20 to 65 million Indians. Men, women and children are trafficked in India for diverse reasons. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, especially in those areas where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of men. Men and boys are trafficked for the purposes of labour, and may be sexually exploited by traffickers to serve as gigolos, massage experts, escorts, etc. A significant portion of children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups.

Indonesia is a source, transit, and destination country for women, children, and men trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. The greatest threat of trafficking facing Indonesian men and women is that posed by conditions of forced labor and debt bondage in more developed Asian countries and the Middle East.

Human trafficking in Israel includes the trafficking of men and women into the country for forced labor and sex slavery. The country has made serious efforts to reduce the problem in recent years and now ranks 90th out of 167 countries who provide data. Identification of victims, criminal justice work and efforts to co-ordinate with business and government agencies has been concerted in reducing this problem in the last decade.

Jordan is a source, destination, and transit country for adults and children subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser extent, sex trafficking. Women from Southeast Asia and East Africa voluntarily migrate to Jordan for employment among the estimated 50,000 foreign domestic workers in the country; some domestic workers are subjected to forced labor. Many of these workers are unable to return to their home countries due to pending criminal charges against them or due to their inability to pay overstay penalties or plane fare home. Some migrant workers from Egypt—the largest source of foreign labor in Jordan—experience forced labor in the construction, service, and agricultural sectors. Syrians may face forced labor in the agricultural sector, while some refugee children are subjected to the worst forms of child labor. Men and women from throughout Asia migrate to work in factories in Jordan's garment industry where some workers experience forced labor. Jordan's sponsorship system places a significant amount of power in the hands of employers and recruitment agencies, preventing workers from switching employers or receiving adequate access to legal recourse in response to abuse. Some Sri Lankan women engaged in prostitution in the country may be trafficking victims.

The Bahamas is a destination country for men and some women from Haiti and other Caribbean countries who are subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor, and, to a lesser extent, women from Jamaica and other countries who are in forced prostitution. Haitian trafficking victims are most likely to migrate to The Bahamas voluntarily, but subsequently be subjected to forced labor in agriculture, domestic service, or forced prostitution. Some employers coerce migrant workers – legal and illegal – to work longer hours, at lower pay, and in conditions not permitted under local labor law by changing the terms of employment contracts, withholding travel documents, refusing transportation back home, threatening to withdraw the employer-specific and employer-held permits, or threatening to have the employee deported through other means. Traffickers reportedly lure Jamaican and other foreign women to the Bahamas with offers of employment in the tourism and entertainment fields and subject the women to forced prostitution after their arrival. The Ministry of Education is investigating allegations that some high school girls in Eleuthera may be involved in a prostitution ring. This report is the only indication that Bahamian citizens may be victims of human trafficking.

Bahrain is a Source and destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. Men and women from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Eritrea migrate voluntarily to Bahrain to work as domestic workers or as unskilled laborers in the construction and service industries. Some, however, face conditions of forced labor after arriving in Bahrain, through use of such practices as unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, contract substitution, non-payment of wages, threats, and physical or sexual abuse.

Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. A significant share of Bangladesh's trafficking victims are men recruited for work overseas with fraudulent employment offers who are subsequently exploited under conditions of forced labor or debt bondage. It also includes the trafficking of children – both boys and girls – within Bangladesh for commercial sexual exploitation, bonded labor, and forced labor. Some children are sold into bondage by their parents, while others are induced into labor or commercial sexual exploitation through fraud and physical coercion. Women and children from Bangladesh are also trafficked.

Qatar is a transit and destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and, to a much lesser extent, forced prostitution. Men and women from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Sudan, Thailand, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and China voluntarily travel to Qatar as laborers and domestic servants, but some subsequently face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude. These conditions include threats of serious physical or financial harm; job switching; the withholding of pay; charging workers for benefits for which the employer is responsible; restrictions on freedom of movement, including the confiscation of passports and travel documents and the withholding of exit permits; arbitrary detention; threats of legal action and deportation; false charges; and physical, mental, and sexual abuse. In some cases, arriving migrant workers have found that the terms of employment in Qatar are wholly different from those they agreed to in their home countries. Individuals employed as domestic servants are particularly vulnerable to trafficking since they are not covered under the provisions of the labor law. A small number of foreign workers transit Qatar and are forced to work on farms in Saudi Arabia. Qatar is also a destination for women who migrate and become involved in prostitution, but the extent to which these women are subjected to forced prostitution is unknown. Children have been used in Qatar and other Gulf countries as camel jockies. Most children are trafficked from Africa and South Asia. This practice has ceased in most areas though. Workers have been forced to work in bad conditions; their salaries are sometimes withheld.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea</span>

Papua New Guinea is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced prostitution and forced labor. Women and children are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation and involuntary domestic servitude; trafficked men are forced to provide labor in logging and mining camps. Children, especially young girls from tribal areas, are most vulnerable to being pushed into commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor by members of their immediate family or tribe. Families traditionally sell girls into forced marriages to settle their debts, leaving them vulnerable to involuntary domestic servitude, and tribal leaders trade the exploitative labor and service of girls and women for guns and political advantage. Young girls sold into marriage are often forced into domestic servitude for the husband’s extended family. In more urban areas, some children from poorer families are prostituted by their parents or sold to brothels. Migrant women and teenage girls from Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines are subjected to forced prostitution, and men from China are transported to the country for forced labor.

Greece is a transit, source and destination country for women and children who are subjected to human trafficking, specifically forced prostitution and conditions of forced labor for men, women, and children. Female sex trafficking victims originate primarily in Eastern Europe and former Soviet bloc countries. Traffickers use physical, emotional, and sexual abuse for coercion. Greece's European Union membership, coupled with a shared border with Turkey, means the country sees massive flows of illegal immigrants looking to enter the EU. Traffickers also use Greece not only as a destination but also as transit stop and also as a source country where even Greek women are prostituted on the way to Western Europe.

The Maldives is primarily a destination country for migrant workers from Bangladesh, and, to a lesser extent, India, some of whom are subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor. Some women are also subjected to forced prostitution. An unknown number of the 110,000 foreign workers currently working in the Maldives – primarily in the construction and service sectors – face fraudulent recruitment practices, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or non-payment of wages, or debt bondage. Thirty thousand of these workers do not have legal status in the country, though both legal and illegal workers were vulnerable to conditions of forced labor. Diplomatic sources estimate that half of the 35,000 Bangladeshis in the Maldives went there illegally and that most of these workers are probably victims of trafficking. Migrant workers pay $1,000 to $4,000 in recruitment fees in order to migrate to the Maldives; such high recruitment costs increase workers’ vulnerability to forced labor, as concluded in a recent ILO report.

Brunei is a destination, and to a lesser extent, a source and transit country for men and women who are subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and forced prostitution. Men and women from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, and Thailand migrate to Brunei for domestic or other low-skilled labor but sometimes face conditions of involuntary servitude upon arrival. There are over 88,000 migrant workers in Brunei, some of whom face debt bondage, non-payment of wages, passport confiscation, confinement to the home, and contract switching – factors that may contribute to trafficking. There were credible reports of nationals from South Asian countries subjected to nonpayment of wages and debt bondage in Brunei for up to two years to pay back foreign recruitment agents. Some of the 25,000 female domestic workers in Brunei were required to work exceptionally long hours without being granted a day for rest, creating an environment consistent with involuntary servitude. There are reports of women forced into prostitution in Brunei, and reports that women arrested for prostitution attest to having been victims of trafficking. Brunei is a transit country for trafficking victims in Malaysia, including Filipinas, who are brought to Brunei for work permit re-authorization before being returned to Malaysia.

Human trafficking is a major and complex societal issue in Myanmar, which is both a source and destination for human trafficking. Both major forms of human trafficking, namely forced labor and forced prostitution, are common in the country, affecting men, women, and children. Myanmar's systemic political and economic problems have made the Burmese people particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Men, women, and children who migrate abroad to Thailand, Malaysia, China, Bangladesh, India, and South Korea for work are often trafficked into conditions of forced or bonded labor or commercial sexual exploitation. Economic conditions within Myanmar have led to the increased legal and illegal migration of citizens regionally and internationally, often to destinations as far from Myanmar as the Middle East. As of July 2022, Myanmar remained on the lowest tier of countries in the Trafficking in Persons Report. The border regions of Myanmar, including Shwe Kokko, are known human trafficking destinations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human trafficking in Southeast Asia</span> Human trafficking

Human trafficking in Southeast Asia has long been a problem for the area and is still prevalent today. It has been observed that as economies continue to grow, the demand for labor is at an all-time high in the industrial sector and the sex tourism sector. A mix of impoverished individuals and the desire for more wealth creates an environment for human traffickers to benefit in the Southeast Asia region. Many nations within the region have taken preventive measures to end human trafficking within their borders and punish traffickers operating there.

References

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