THE US State Department yesterday named and shamed Australia as a source and destination for human trafficking for sexual servitude and forced labour.
It said women from Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and China – and to a lesser extent Eastern Europe – were forced into slavery after migrating to Australia voluntarily with the intention of working legally.
However the department praised Australia for increasing efforts to combat human trafficking. A State Department report said women and men were coerced into “bonded labour” or “debt bondage” by organised crime gangs. And the department says it has for the first time identified an Australian citizen in the US as a human trafficking victim.
The victim was a woman, but no other details were revealed. The report also chided Australia for tolerating prostitution among young Aboriginal girls.
“Australia is a source and destination country for women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically exploitation in forced prostitution, and, to a lesser extent, women and men in forced labour and children in commercial sexual exploitation,” it said. “It is also a source country for child victims of sex trafficking. Primarily teenage girls, but also some boys, are forced into prostitution by pimps.
“Some indigenous teenage girls are exploited in prostitution at rural truck stops.” The report’s author was not identified, but The Courier-Mail understands it was special investigator Stefanie Kronenburg, who visited Brisbane last year for discussions with Australian Federal Police.
She was told an estimated 1200 victims of human trafficking made it to Australia each year. Some had their passports confiscated by criminals and were forced to work in domestic servitude. In a preamble to the report, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described human trafficking as “modern-day slavery” and a “global scourge”.
The report also said women visiting Australia were sometimes kidnapped.
“They are sometimes held in captivity, subjected to physical and sexual violence and intimidation, manipulated through illegal drugs, and obliged to pay off unexpected or inflated debts to their traffickers,” it said.
It said labourers were recruited on a temporary basis – from the Pacific islands, India, China, South Korea and the Philippines – and underpaid.
“After their arrival, some are subjected by unscrupulous employers and labour agencies to forced labour in agriculture, viticulture, construction and other sectors,” the report said.
“They face confiscation of their travel documents, confinement on the employment site, threats of physical harm, and debt bondage through inflated debts imposed by employers or labour agencies.
“Most often, traffickers are part of small but highly sophisticated organised crime networks that frequently involve family and business connections between Australians and overseas contacts.
“Some traffickers attempt to prevent victims from receiving assistance by abusing the legal system in order to create difficulties for victims who contact authorities for help.”
The UN estimates there are 12.3 million people in forced labour, bonded labour and commercial sexual servitude.
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