Grisly Human Trafficking Discoveries May Doom Obama's Troubled Trade Strategy [View all]

[cali]

(Personally, I very much doubt that anything will derail the TPP)

Americans of all political persuasions abhor human trafficking. So why is the Obama administration pushing a highly controversial trade pact that would reward
nations with some of the world’s worst human trafficking records? It is a good question, and one that has been brought into sharp focus by reports overnight of the discovery of mass graves of trafficking victims on the Malaysian-Thai border. The grisly finds underline the extent to which both Malaysia and Thailand remain hot-beds of one of the world’s most despicable industries. Some human trafficking victims — typically adult males — are abducted to work as slaves in, for instance, the Thai fishing industry. Meanwhile, both the Thai and Malaysian governments are heavily complicit in the exploitation of countless women and children in East Asia’s brothels. Yet, almost unbelievably, the Obama administration is pushing for Thailand and Malaysia to enjoy specially
privileged access to the U.S. market under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).


<snip>

Perhaps most ominously for the administration, the State Department is due to publish its 2015 global review of human trafficking in the next few weeks. In previous years its condemnations of both Malaysia and Thailand have been slashing. As the London Guardian pointed out, although these nations promote themselves as modern fast-developing countries, their ranking in the State Department’s annual survey “puts them among the world’s most lawless, oppressive and dysfunctional.”

In its 2014 survey, for instance, the State Department explicitly accused the Malaysian government of conniving with people smugglers to worsen the predicament of victims: “Victims were not allowed to leave the country pending trial proceedings. The government’s policy of forcing trafficking victims into facilities discouraged victims from bringing cases to the government’s attention or cooperating with authorities…..Some foreign embassies sheltered victims directly to expedite their repatriation and protect them from detention in Malaysian facilities during lengthy criminal proceedings. Some NGOs reported that they did not refer victims to the police, as they believed doing so was detrimental to the welfare of the victims.

<snip>

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2015/05/25/grisly-human-trafficking-discoveries-may-doom-obamas-troubled-trade-strategy/