Human Trafficking: S'pore tells US to put own house in order

What is the definition of human trafficking?

The definition of trafficking is trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use by force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving and receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs ( From Human Trafficking website)

Now I shall go into the main theme of US – Singapore relations.

I refer to today’s The Straits Time Page A8, "Human Trafficking: S'pore tells US to put own house in order".

What is the main problem now? Singapore is being accused by the US that we are not doing enough to curb sex and labour trafficking. However, what is the US even doing to help reduce its own percentage of labour trafficking and prostitutes. It is not even looking into its own record, and even pronounces on other countries” that we are not making any laws or increasing police patrol to reduce the number of prostitutes and human trafficking. In fact there are even a few reports of the police organising raids on Geylang, an infamous place where sex workers would hang out. Another website that you can look at that talks about the prostitutes is this : Blog for sex workers

We are doing all we can with police raids and frequent Marine Police patrolling the area, we are always trying to make our country perfect and the statistics can show that we are constantly reducing our number of human trafficking. The US say that we do not fully comply with minimum international standards for protecting migrant workers from forced labour or other forms of trafficking.

Is the US even protecting their migrant workers? Is the US even effective in taking “some significant new steps”? Is the US even being efficient by placing itself in Tier 1, and placing Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Brunei, Afghanistan and the Maldives in Tier 2 Watch List? “It has not shown increased efforts in prosecuting more culprits or identifying victims” as quoted by The Straits Times, even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “called the report “puzzling” because the US had not satisfactorily explained how it had arrived at its conclusions”. How can the US even be placed in Tier 1 when there is “AN AVERAGE of 16,000 foreigners” who are “trafficked into the United States every year”, and another quote by The Straits Times, “Sex trafficking was again the main problem, with 1,018 incidents reported”.

With all the statistics and quotes by The Straits Times, I would like to speak out against what the US has just done. With all its statistics going against them, with so many reports on human trafficking and sex trafficking, how could it rank itself in Tier 1, where it seems like Tier 1 is the best of all the Tiers, having low crime or even no crime. Singapore is even placed in Tier 2 Watch List when its statistics are even lower than that of the US. It is such an irony! Singapore is also said to “have a significant number of victims and have failed to show increasing efforts to combat the situation”.

The United States really needs to look into this situation. I do hope that it would be solved as soon as possible, so that the US – Singapore relations will not be affected.

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