Taiwan Makes Progress in Human Trafficking

In my time here I have met several families who employ "illegal" Filipino maids -- usually runaways from factory slavery or sexual slavery. One maid I met told a horrific tale, so matter of factly that it was entirely believable, of being locked in a room and forced to service numerous customers each day. "But I am so ugly," she said. "I couldn't understand why they would want me. But they did...." Thus it was with a certain personal interest that I read the State Department's plaudits for The Beautiful Isle making progress in human trafficking:

In last year's report, Taiwan was placed on the "Tier 2 Watch List" for failing to show evidence of increased efforts over the past year to address human trafficking, particularly forced labor and sexual servitude among legal Southeast Asian contract workers and brides.

According to the 2007 Interim Assessment, Taiwanese authorities failed to prosecute any offenders for trafficking for forced labor or domestic servitude, despite evidence of a significant problem among the 350,000 Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Filipino workers in Taiwan.

It said Taiwanese authorities failed to make progress in developing a system to identify and protect foreign workers subjected to conditions of forced labor or involuntary servitude.

However, it mentioned significant improvements made by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) in policies and regulations governing the terms and conditions of work for foreign laborers in Taiwan.

The sad sick part is paragraph 2 -- NO prosecutions despite widespread abuses. Makes me want to throw up.

The State Department's report is here (scroll down to Taiwan). The report notes:

Taiwan has improved its collaboration with local and international NGOs to protect victims of trafficking, particularly P.R.C. citizens, and some members of its legislature are attempting to pass comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation. However, there continue to be concerns over the treatment of the large number of Vietnamese brides present in Taiwan. Taiwan officials concede that the process for admitting foreign brides is not sufficiently monitored, noting that 47 percent of Vietnamese brides in Taipei county are not living with their Taiwanese husbands. Taiwan also remains a destination for foreign workers. The oversight system for their recruitment and stay in Taiwan is not adequately scrutinized. Twenty thousand of the 350,000 foreign contract workers in Taiwan are "runaways" who have left their site of employment in Taiwan for a variety of reasons, including abuse or conditions of involuntary servitude. Taiwan authorities view most runaways as workers seeking to remain in Taiwan illegally, and therefore treat them as law-breakers, detaining and then deporting them immediately upon capture. Labor rights and anti-trafficking NGOs claim — with detailed accounts — that many of these runaway workers escaped conditions of bonded or forced labor or sexual servitude.

Clearly the System has completely failed the foreign workers. Time for big changes.

I can't let this go, though, without pointing out the high irony of the US, a nation involved in secret kidnappings of individuals in third countries and delivering them to allied non-democracies for torture and abuse -- not to mention the transportation of individuals to Guantanamo -- discussing another nation's human trafficking problems as if it had any moral authority to do so. The arrant hypocrisy of the US not only undermines our position in the world, it undermines democratic principles, and in this case, the principles that enable us to oppose trafficking in human beings.

Guys: Beam. Eye. Cast out.

[Taiwan] [US]