Modern Slavery
By Christopher H. Smith (Op-ed from The Washington Times 06/18/02)
The United States abolished legalized slavery nearly 140 years ago, but
today a new scourge of human slavery remains and thrives throughout the
world. Americans need to know the reality of human trafficking and our
government needs to exert its fullest strength to end this appalling
human rights abuse.
An estimated 700,000 to 4 million victims of human trafficking are
bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like
conditions each year. Most victims are women and children.
Many are lured from their homes with promises of a better life by
cunning traffickers who force them to work in brothels as sex slaves or
as forced laborers in sweatshops, as domestic servants, or beggars, to
name just a few scenarios. Violence is commonly used to control victims
and maintain their servitude. In cases of forced prostitution, victims
are repeatedly raped every day and are forced to cope in subhuman
conditions.
Recently, the State Department released its second annual "Trafficking
in Persons" (TIP) report, which evaluates the efforts of 89 countries in
combating the modern-day slavery of human trafficking. The TIP report is
a tool created by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a law that I
sponsored to assess the progress made in combating the scourge of
trafficking in human beings around the world. The law requires the State
Department to rank countries' efforts to meet minimum standards to
combat trafficking and whether those countries are making "significant
efforts" to bring itself into compliance with those standards.
When the law was enacted in 2000, many in Congress and the
administration did not want to publicly name offending countries. Other
policymakers, myself included, argued that some countries only get
serious about addressing their failures to combat slavery if their
deficiencies are publicly identified. My two year's experience with the
TIP report supports that argument: During the year between the first and
the second reports, the governments of more than two dozen countries
improved their behavior and policies enough to merit an improved mark.
Only two countries -- Cambodia and the Kyrgyz Republic -- dropped in
ranking from the first year to the second.
It is clear the Bush administration devoted substantial time, effort and
personnel to prepare the 2002 TIP report. The report will continue to
serve as a useful tool for diplomats and members of Congress as we
engage our foreign counterparts regarding their efforts to combat human
trafficking.
Nonetheless, the TIP report is not flawless. India, Thailand and
Vietnam, among others, received better rankings than they deserved
despite credible reports indicating their efforts to combat trafficking
were clearly insignificant in light of the enormity of the human
trafficking problems in those countries. More than 2.3 million girls and
women are believed to be working in the sex industry against their will
at any given time -- possibly as many as 40 percent are children. In
India, for example, more than 200,000 persons are trafficked in the
country each year. Indian boys, some as young as age 4, are trafficked
abroad to be enslaved and brutalized as camel jockeys in camel races.
Evidence exists that law-enforcement and government officials help
facilitate human trafficking, that investigations and prosecutions of
traffickers are rare, and that local corruption renders most
prosecutorial efforts ineffective. Nonetheless, the State Department
deemed India to be making "significant efforts" to combat trafficking.
As we move forward, it is imperative that the United States and foreign
governments exert more effort to eliminate the scourge of human slavery.
The United States must be resolute in ensuring that governments that do
not seriously combat trafficking will receive and retain the lowest
possible ranking until they mend their ways. We must also ensure that
even our allies are not given a free pass if the facts show they are not
doing enough to address modern-day slavery. If the report is to continue
to be an effective document, it must honestly evaluate countries
according to the evidence.
Above all, the United States must lead by example. Despite the U.S.
government's many initiatives to prevent and punish trafficking in human
beings here and abroad, I recently received disturbing information that
some U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea are patrons of
brothels where trafficked women are enslaved in forced prostitution.
U.S. military personnel appear to have knowledge that these women are
forced to prostitute themselves and, perhaps most disturbingly, their
actions appear to be taking place with the knowledge and tacit consent
of their commanding officers.
The Pentagon must act expeditiously to clean up its act in this regard.
I and other members of the House and Senate have requested Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to launch an immediate and thorough
investigation into U.S. soldiers' unconscionable exploitation of
enslaved women, while fighting to defend freedom and liberty abroad.
While we are making progress in our fight against human trafficking, the
sheer number of victims worldwide -- possibly as many as half the
population of my home state of New Jersey -- underscores the gravity of
this problem and the vast amount of work still to be done.
Rep. Christopher H. Smith, Republican from New Jersey, is vice chairman
of the House Committee on International Relations.
This column is by Rep. Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey,
who is vice chairman of the House Committee on International Relations.
This column first appeared in The Washington Times on June 18, 2002