US upgrades Malaysia, Cuba in human trafficking report

That’s according to the latest annual report from the U.S. State Department, which rates 188 countries on their efforts to stamp out trafficking in persons.

The US report can be read online or downloaded in PDF format from the US State Department’s human trafficking section.

But still, some of the 2015 rankings are controversial with rights groups questioning whether politics has trumped that ambition.

Kerry is expected early next month to visit Malaysia, current chair of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Thailand is also a member. Both are part of of people-smuggling route for Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

Meanwhile Thailand – downgraded alongside Malaysia last year particularly because of pervasive labor abuses in the fishing industry – remained on the blacklist.

This year’s report boosted the two countries from the worst-ranked of those categorically failing to respond. (Tier 1 as most compliant, through Tier 3 as the worst offender.).

Though Cuba’s penal code does not criminalize all forms of human trafficking, the report said “the government reported continuing efforts to amend its criminal code, including bringing it into conformity with the requirements of the 2000 UN TIP Protocol”.

Other countries bumped up in the U.S. rankings included Angola, Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Uruguay, all moving from the Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 2 list.

This year, 18 countries were upgraded and another 18 were downgraded.

US President Barack Obama now has 90 days to determine whether to apply sanctions against tier 3 governments.

“It’s a battle against money”.

“We must never, ever allow a price tag to be attached to the heart and soul and freedom of a fellow human being”, Kerry said. “It’s quite remarkable that in the year 2015, we face a modern version of slavery”.

Two months ago, it emerged that deep in the jungle along Malaysia’s border with Thailand were abandoned makeshift prisons once thought to hold migrants held for ransom by human traffickers. Some Thai police removed Rohingya men from detention facilities in Thailand and sold them to brokers that transported them to southern Thailand; some were forced to work as cooks and guards in camps or sold into forced labor on farms or in shipping companies.

Academic Panitan Wattanayagorn of Chulalongkorn University’s political science faculty, said the Prayut government had made progress in dealing with human trafficking in line with recommendations from the US side, such as intensifying law enforcement that led to the arrests and indictments of human trafficking rings, including high-ranking officers.

In May, Malaysia hosted talks with delegates from Thailand and Indonesia about how to address the growing crisis of migrants trapped on trafficking boats off the coast. Thailand is not a party to the proposed agreement.

The State Department said Thailand’s failure to investigate and prosecute officials suspected of complicity in human trafficking was one of the reasons it was not upgraded.

Traffickers pose as matchmakers, arranging sham marriages within India or to Gulf states, and then subject women and girls to sex trafficking, it said.

He added: “The discussion on Malaysia is… a triumph of diplomatic writing trumpeting process rather than impact”. Malaysia’s human trafficking upgrade has angered advocates who argue the U.S. favors financial benefits over human rights.

“Upgrades for Malaysia and Cuba are a clear politicization of the report, and a stamp of approval for countries who have failed to take the basic actions to merit this upgrade”, Democratic Sen. It said in a statement the evaluation “does not accurately reflect the reality and fails to take into account significant efforts undertaken by the Thai Government on all fronts during the past year”.

Highlighting the hidden risks that workers may encounter when seeking employment, he said: “This year’s report places a special emphasis on human trafficking in the global marketplace”.