{"id":18782,"date":"2014-07-10T20:50:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T12:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=18782"},"modified":"2014-07-10T19:16:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T11:16:42","slug":"us-urges-southeast-asian-bloc-should-do-more-to-fight-human-trafficking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/10\/us-urges-southeast-asian-bloc-should-do-more-to-fight-human-trafficking\/","title":{"rendered":"US urges Southeast Asian bloc should do more to fight human trafficking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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WASHINGTON\u2014The United States urged\u00a0Southeast Asia\u2019s regional bloc on Tuesday to do more to combat human trafficking after two of its member states were blacklisted for failing to act decisively against exploitation of migrant labourers.<\/p>\n

A Democratic senator also questioned whether Malaysia, one of the countries downgraded in a State Department report last month, should be excluded from a U.S.-backed trans-Pacific trade pact currently under negotiation.<\/p>\n

Longtime U.S. ally Thailand was also demoted to the lowest level in the annual U.S. rankings of governments\u2019 anti-trafficking efforts, principally over abusive practices in the Thai seafood industry.<\/p>\n

Scot Marciel, the top U.S. diplomat for\u00a0Southeast Asia, told a congressional hearing the Association of\u00a0Southeast Asian\u00a0Nations, or ASEAN, is slowly beginning to address human trafficking but \u201ccan and should do more.\u201d<\/p>\n

The so-called \u201ctier 3\u201d rankings for Thailand and Malaysia mean they could face U.S. sanctions. Other ASEAN members, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar are on a watch list. Those poorer nations are a source of cheap labour for garment factories, long-haul fishing boats, plantations and households in their more prosperous neighbours.<\/p>\n

Thailand and Malaysia are principally destination countries, and Marciel said the downgrade of two important partners in Asia indicated that the rankings were not based on political considerations.<\/p>\n

Thailand, already facing restrictions on U.S. security assistance after a military coup in May, had lobbied hard to avoid the blacklisting, and it has complained the U.S. did not recognize the progress it\u2019s made. But Luis CdeBaca, U.S. ambassador-at-large for human trafficking issues, said those efforts were almost exclusively focused on the sex industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we want that, and while we laud the people who are doing that in Thailand, the crushing numbers actually show up in forced labour,\u201d CdeBaca told a Senate panel that oversees policy toward East Asia. He said he hoped the downgrade would heighten awareness in the region of the seriousness of labour trafficking.<\/p>\n

On the positive side of the ledger in\u00a0Southeast Asia, CdeBaca said ASEAN has taken initial steps toward drafting a convention on trafficking in persons and a regional plan of action. The U.S. also wants it to establish a secretariat on human trafficking.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ben Cardin, the Democratic chair of the Senate panel, welcomed efforts by ASEAN members Vietnam and Brunei against human trafficking, notwithstanding other concerns over other aspects of their records on human rights.<\/p>\n

But he took aim at Malaysia, which he said had moved in the \u201cwrong direction\u201d despite spending four years on the U.S. watch list before its downgrade last month. Cardin said this showed the need for enforceable labour standards in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP\u2014the free trade pact the U.S. is negotiating with 11 other nations, including Malaysia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they ready for TPP if they can\u2019t deal with their trafficking issues? It raises a question to me,\u201d Cardin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u2014The United States urged\u00a0Southeast Asia\u2019s regional bloc on Tuesday to do more to combat human trafficking after two of its …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":18785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-w","mauthors-matthew-pennington","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}