EDITOR’S NOTE: The Humanitarian
Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) has also responded to
the US Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report. View a copy of their
report at the end of this blog post.
Source: Simeon Bennett,
Bloomberg
Businessweek
03 July 2010
Singapore doesn’t have a serious human trafficking problem, its
government said in a
response to a U.S. State
Department report that said the city-state had regressed in its
battle against the practice.
The State Department last month put Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam on a watchlist of middle-tier countries for trafficking,
one level above the worst offenders such as North Korea, Myanmar
and Saudi Arabia. Singapore showed an “inadequate response” to sex
trafficking with only two convictions last year, and didn’t
prosecute anybody under its forced labor laws, the report said.
The report’s reliance on reported and prosecution figures was
“superficial and perfunctory at best,” the government said in a
six-page response received today by e-mail. The low numbers show
that Singapore’s approach to combating trafficking in persons, or
TIP, has been effective, it said.
“Different countries adopt different approaches and it is a
matter of what works for each country,” the government said.
“Singapore will continue with its calibrated and pragmatic approach
to TIP issues, and review this if necessary, rather than blindly
follow a one-for-all operating model just to achieve a better
technical ranking on the US TIP Report.”
Singapore’s police conducted 2,600 anti-vice operations and
arrested 7,614 women for suspected vice activities last year,
compared with 1,400 operations and 5,047 arrests in 2008, according
to the statement. A total of 476 employers were prosecuted for
breaching their employment obligations, last year. Authorities
investigated 32 cases of alleged trafficking, and prosecuted two,
the government said.
“A low absolute number of reported and convicted cases is
therefore no basis for concluding that Singapore has a serious TIP
problem,” the government said. “Singapore takes a stern view of
practices leading to the exploitation or abuse of vulnerable
persons and we investigate and prosecute such offences
vigorously.”
4th July 2010
Your Excellency, Ambassador David Adelman
Embassy of the United States
27 Napier Road, Singapore 258508.
Dear Ambassador
We take this occasion on your Independence Day, this 4th July
2010, to thank your government on your stand for the rights of
domestic workers at the recent International Labor Conference (ILC)
held in June in Geneva.
“The United States Government fully supports the adoption of a
Convention and Recommendation on decent work for domestic workers.
We look forward to the development of a robust Convention that can
be widely ratified by member states, supplemented by a
Recommendation that provides for useful guidance for effectively
implementing the Convention. Such a proposed Convention on domestic
workers might usefully be framed in the overall context of a call
for member states to adopt, implement, and periodically review a
national policy on domestic work aimed at improving the situation
of domestic workers and promoting equality of treatment between
domestic workers and other wage earners.”
- Michel Smyth, Acting Director of the Division of
Interpretations and Regulatory Analysis for the United States
Department of Labour’s Wage and Hour Division. Extract from US
Opening statement at ILC 2010.
As a non-governmental organization in Singapore, we have been
promoting the enhanced protection of migrant workers’ rights in
Singapore. Among the 900, 000 migrant workers are some 200,000
domestic workers in Singapore. Though the majority appear ‘happy’
working in Singapore, we see over a 1000 cases of abuse and labour
exploitation a year that is in need of our assistance. So it was
really tremendous encouragement when your Mr. Michel Smyth of the
US delegation at the International Labour Conference in Geneva,
made a historic opening statement in support of decent work for
domestic workers. Domestic workers around the world suffer
discrimination and are not recognised as workers simply because
they are working in an informal sector. In Singapore, they are
denied the right to pregnancy, the right to a weekly rest day, the
right to freedom of movement, among other violations of their
dignity as persons.
We would like to thank your State too for the recent
recommendations you made in your Trafficking in Persons Report 2010
on Singapore. We view these recommendations as useful insights into
the human trafficking situation in our country and we are glad
these were made public to our government. Over the last 6 years, we
have worked with sex trafficked women who fled to us for safety and
assistance. Though few in numbers – around 10 persons a year, we
believe that they are representative of many others, who may have
failed to escape from the traffickers. Hence, among the
recommendations made, we wish to highlight your recommendation on
enhanced victim protection measures. There could not be
prosecutions, if victims are unwilling to be witnesses because of
inadequate socio-economic support services and immunity from
criminal prosecution.
“Singapore does not provide victims of sex or labor trafficking
with legal alternatives to removal to countries where they may face
hardship or retribution. The government did not provide positive
incentives, such as immigration relief and legal aid, for foreign
victims of trafficking to participate voluntarily in investigations
and prosecutions of trafficking offenses. Identified victims were
able to obtain work authorization while assisting with the
prosecution of their traffickers, but some had difficulty in
finding employment. When cases were being investigated or
prosecuted, the government generally held the victims’ passports
and declined their requests for repatriation.
Although victims are legally entitled to pursue civil cases
against their traffickers, in practice, most foreign victims do not
have the financial resources to do so”.
- Extract from US State Department Trafficking in
Persons report 2010.
We, therefore, take the position, that Singapore like other
ASEAN States — Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia –
should enact an Anti Human Trafficking law and be signatory to the
Palermo Protocol. There should also be the adoption of a multi
stakeholders’ approach strategy to develop and implement a national
plan to combat human trafficking, including especially, the
training of police and enforcement officers on the identification
of victims of sex and labor trafficking. Many victims, we believe,
have been criminalized as immigration offenders and deported after
serving imprisonment.
In Thailand, for example, I have personally observed how closely
NGOs are engaged with the police authorities on addressing the
needs of the victims of trafficking. In Taiwan, victims of human
trafficking are allowed to work in cross sector jobs, allowing for
job mobility. In Hong Kong, the maternity rights of the domestic
worker are protected under the Employment Ordinance. In the
Philippines, the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration
mandates a standard contract for all Overseas Filipino Workers that
provide for a cap on agency placement fees to an equivalent of one
month’s salary, minimum wages and weekly rest days.
Singapore has indeed made some significant improvements, over
the years, especially by the Ministry of Manpower, but there is
still much that could be done on enforcement measures against human
trafficking as defined by the Palermo Protocol. We recommend too
that destination countries, like Singapore should have binding
bilateral agreements with source countries to arrest ‘debt
bondages’, contract substitutions, faked documents, forced
repatriation and irregular migration. The transnational crimes
against women and children are too horrendous for any State or
persons not to exercise greater political will to end the flesh
trade that rake billions for criminals.
We share the joy of the American people as you celebrate your
Independence Day and as you share your freedom with those who are
victims of modern slavery in this century.
Thank you America! Happy Birthday!
Warmest Wishes,
Bridget Tan
President