US Move to Upgrade China in Human Trafficking Ranking Questioned

The U.S. State Department on Friday upgraded China from the lowest ranking in an annual global survey of human trafficking, saying Beijing was making “significant efforts” to comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of the scourge.

But the move was questioned by the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce, who felt that human trafficking remained a major concern in the world’s most populous nation.

The State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed China on Tier-2 Watch List—the second lowest rank—after dumping it last year to the Tier-3 blacklist of the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report.

This year's TIP report did not give specific reasons for upgrading China.

But in a general report on the country, it said the Chinese government was ”making significant efforts” to meet basic standards in fighting human trafficking.

“The Government of the People’s Republic of China does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so,” the report said.

It noted that during the reporting period from April 2013 to March this year, China has moved to abolish its controversial "re-education through labor" camp-based punishment system.

Facilities converted

Some media and NGOs indicated that the government released detainees from and ceased operations at many such camps while others believed that some of the facilities have been converted into different types of detention centers, some of which employ forced labor, the report said.

It also said Beijing provided limited information about its investigation, prosecution, and conviction of traffickers.

The government’s conflation of trafficking with other crimes also made it difficult to accurately assess law enforcement efforts to prosecute trafficking offenses, it said. 

Similarly, the government did not provide sufficiently detailed data to ascertain the number of victims it identified or assisted. 

Chinese authorities also continued to forcibly repatriate some North Korean refugees by treating them as illegal economic migrants—despite reports that many North Korean female refugees in China are trafficking victims, the report said.

Decision challenged

Royce, a Republican lawmaker, questioned the State Department’s decision to upgrade China in the trafficking ranking.

“We should ask why China's placement on the TIP Report was upgraded from Tier 3 to the Watch List when China continues to fail on the three core areas of protection, prevention, and prosecution,” he said in a statement. 

“We know that the system of state-sponsored forced labor continues unchanged and that victims of trafficking from North Korea are routinely sent back to face further abuses,” he said.

Last year’s TIP report, in demoting China to the blacklist, said Beijing did not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking despite being placed on the Tier 2 Watch List for nearly a decade.

The downgrades on China and Russia in 2013 came after U.S. lawmakers accused the State Department of giving special treatment to the major powers when evaluating their human trafficking record in a bid to avoid imposing sanctions on them for strategic or other reasons.

China and several other countries which had been on the Tier-2 Watch List were accused of exploiting a loophole in the U.S. anti-trafficking legislation by pledging last-minute programs to combat human smuggling but failing to follow through year after year.

So Congress passed a law that came into effect in 2008 for an “automatic downgrade” for any country that had been on the Tier 2 Watch List for two years but had not taken significant anti-trafficking measures.

No sanctions

State Department officials said Friday that President Barack Obama had decided against slapping sanctions on China, Russia and Uzbekistan, another country that was demoted to the bottom of the rankings last year.

“[T]he President decided that it was in the U.S. national interest and would promote the purposes of the trafficking law to waive sanctions against them as well as several other countries,” Luis CdeBaca, U.S. ambassador-at-large for human trafficking issues, said at a media briefing.

“And those are countries that we, again, are very much wanting to and feel we can engage with in order to move forward,” he said.

Thailand and Malaysia were among 23 countries to receive the lowest "Tier 3" ranking in the 2014 TIP report. 

Incumbents at that level include Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Zimbabwe.

The report said the “tens of thousands” of trafficking victims in Thailand were migrants from neighboring countries such as Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos who were "forced, coerced, or defrauded into labor or exploited in the sex trade." 

A significant number were trafficked into the fishing industry, garment production and domestic work.

The report cited media reports of "trafficking-related complicity by Thai civilian and navy personnel in crimes involving the exploitation" of Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar by the tens of thousands over the past year.

Walls of hidden treasures

To the naked eye they resemble a parade of surreal shapes: a horse-drawn carriage up in flames; a series of goats, men and cows; a grand European-style ship. “This could be a blade . . . but it’s just my own idea,” said archaeologist Khieu Chan, pointing to a vague black smudge that was once a painting.

Shortly after five in the afternoon, Cambodia’s most famous temple was unusually quiet. A willowy woman posed in a gauzy dress, the lotus-bud shaped towers of Angkor Wat behind her. A blonde traveller rested her head in her hands. Two monks explored a centuries-old library. Out of sight, the sun’s last rays shone on the faint outlines of a set of ancient images.

Archaeologist Noel Hidalgo Tan on a dig at Angkor Wat . Charlotte Pert

Ignored for decades, these are some of about 200 illustrations found on the walls of the temple that have come under new scrutiny since Australian rock art researcher Noel Hidalgo Tan stumbled on them during his lunch break one afternoon in 2010.

Using technology called de-correlation stretch analysis, first employed in a NASA mars rover mission, Tan enhanced images of the paintings to reveal scenes from the16th century onward, a period long considered the dark ages of Angkorian history.

“My first thought when I enhanced the paintings was ‘Whoa! Cool!’” he wrote in an email from Canberra, where he works at the National Australian University. “I certainly expected something to come out but I was not quite prepared for how elaborate some of them were.”

The findings, published in Antiquity last month, fit into a shift in the way researchers view the decline of the temple complex from the 13th century, when Chinese emissary Zhou Daguan visited a grand city of several hundred thousand people and the 19th century, when French explorers arrived to find a few houses and villagers.

Until recently, the accepted theory was that the temples were abandoned suddenly after the Siamese (Thai) army sacked them in 1431 and the capital was moved to Phnom Penh. Researchers now believe the decline was more gradual and that the complex continued to be inhabited.

The hidden secrets of the temple walls.Charlotte Pert

“The lost city is a romantic fantasy in Western sensibilities, but to Cambodians Angkor Wat was and still is a very much living site, and these paintings reflect that liveliness,” Tan wrote. “People and pilgrims continued to visit. There was an attempt to renovate the temple in order to reclaim its former glory.” As well as images of ancient orchestras, boats and animals, the paintings include religious iconography: a pointed tower resembles a stupa and a seated figure could be a depiction of the Buddha. Tan believes they were commissioned in the 16th century by King Ang Chan as part of the transformation of Angkor Wat, originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, into a Buddhist pilgrimage site.

While some of the images could be graffiti, others are more elaborate, indicating that there was probably a hierarchical system in place that mustered the labour needed.

“Given that these paintings also depict entire scenes as opposed to paintings of single objects, they suggest a level of organisation and planning to create them,” wrote Tan.

There is more research to be done, but the results so far are encouraging for scholars of the post-Angkorian period, including Dr Damian Evans from the University of Sydney. For the past few years he has studied the temples as a place where people lived as well as worshipped. He was in charge of the team Tan was working with in 2010.

“The excavation Noel was working on at the time actually found occupation from that post-Angkorian period – they’d found material evidence for adaptation and residential activity inside the enclosure, and then he actually found some artistic expressions from the period.”

Speaking in his office on the banks of the Siem Reap River, Evans explained how faint evidence still remains from the so-called ‘dark ages’ in the lumps and bumps of the landscape. “Instead of building temples out of stone, they would build temples out of wood; instead of carving into stone they would do it in palm leaf manuscript,” he said.

“This has contributed to this sense that Angkor was abandoned and left to the jungle, whereas actually there was a large population that continued to live here even after the royal court re-located to Phnom Penh, and that’s the kind of evidence which Noel is uncovering in these paintings.”

Archaeologists are coming to the conclusion that the reason the royal court re-located was largely due to climate changes that wrecked the complex water management system. A paper published in May by Brendan Buckley and Roland Fletcher reinforced the argument that alternating periods of droughts and floods had a great effect.

“Because this mastery over the environment and the effect of this water management was always so fundamental to Khmer kingship, they basically had to rethink the basis of kingship and how their power was determined in the royal court,” said Evans.

The court moved to Phnom Penh in 1422. The capital moved a few times subsequently but never far.

Local life in the temple complex, however, continued for centuries to come, as depicted in the hundreds of paintings. Knowledge of the illustrations has been passed through the generations to the villagers who still live close to the ancient settlement today. “The local people, they know,” said Chan.

While tour guides do not yet include the paintings on their day to day rounds, Tan is not sure they should, at least not yet. “I’m fearful of encouraging people to touch the walls,” he wrote.

There didn’t seem to be a danger of that on a recent evening, as a guide standing close to some of the clearest paintings pushed an Italian tourist toward a gap in the stone in the opposite direction. Through it, the famous towers of the temple were visible. “Look through this hole, you can see Angkor,” he said. “You want to take a picture?”

Fate of int'l law at stake

It has been more than a month since the East Sea (South China Sea) was again stirred up near the Paracel Islands. Forty years ago, in January 1974, the Paracels were a battlefield between China and the then South Viet Nam.

In taking control of the islands from South Viet Nam, China sank one South Vietnamese naval ship and damaged four others, leaving 53 Vietnamese killed and 16 injured. The battle resulted in China obtaining full control of the Paracels for the first time.

More than sovereignty

Viet Nam's sovereignty claim over the Paracel Islands is based on the Nguyen dynasty occupation and administration of the Paracels and Spratly islands from at least the 17th century when the islands belonged to no one, although Vietnamese fishermen have been fishing in the sea area for thousands of years. During the period of Western colonial expansion sovereignty over the Paracels was continuously exercised by France, the colonial ruler of Viet Nam.

Sovereignty later passed from France to South Vietnam under the 1954 Geneva Accords, and it then passed by succession to the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam when North and South Viet Nam were united in 1975. Viet Nam has continued to assert its claims to sovereignty by protesting activities conducted by China in the Paracels.

Although Viet Nam's claim to the Paracels has a strong legal basis, China insists that it has "indisputable" sovereignty. China refuses to discuss the sovereignty issue with Viet Nam in bilateral negotiations. Also, China will not agree to refer the sovereignty dispute to an international court or tribunal.

The act which made the Paracel Islands the latest hotspot in the South China Sea was China's placement of the Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig deep inside Viet Nam's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf, close to the islands.

At first, the oil rig controversy may look like a dispute over who has sovereignty over the Paracels. However, a closer look reveals that it is also a dispute about the international law of the sea.

Distance no issue

Triton Island in the Paracels, near which China is locating the deep-water oil rig HD-981, is a 1.6 km2 sand and coral cay that cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of its own. Consequently, under the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it is a "rock" that can generate no more than a 12 nautical mile territorial sea.

Even if some other islands in the Paracels are, in principle, entitled to an EEZ and continental shelf, China's claim of the sea area is groundless for two reasons.

First, since both Viet Nam and China claim sovereignty over the Paracels, any EEZ claimed from the Paracels is an area in dispute. Second, the rig is in an area of overlapping claims because it is within the EEZ and continental shelf claimed by Viet Nam from its mainland as well as within the supposed EEZ from the Paracels.

According to the practice of states in maritime boundary delimitations, Triton Island and the other islands of the Paracels should be given "reduced effect" in drawing the maritime boundary because the length of coastline of the small islands is much shorter than the coastline of Viet Nam.

China and Viet Nam have followed this practice in negotiating their maritime boundary. In delimiting their limited maritime boundary in the northern-most section of the Gulf of Tonkin, the two States agreed to give only 25 per cent effect to Bach Long Vi Island, a Vietnamese island located there. This was the case even though the island has an area of 2.33 km2 and a permanent population.

In any case, since there is no agreed maritime boundary in this area, the argument that the rig is located closer to the Paracels than to the Vietnamese coast is not relevant. The rig is located in an area where China cannot exercise exclusive rights.

Rig move violates DOC

The true basis for China's claim to the natural resources in Viet Nam's EEZ is not an EEZ claim from the Paracels, but its claim to rights and jurisdiction over all the natural resources with the nine-dash line that Beijing has demarcated on its map of the South China Sea. Without providing any official documents supporting this claim or its legal basis under international law, the nine-dash line map is being used by China to claim rights to all the natural resources in and under the waters inside the line, even when they are in the EEZ of other States.

China is basing its claim on the nine-dash line map because the areas with high oil and gas potential off the coast of Viet Nam are all located outside the areas that China could claim under the international law of the sea. Therefore, China has decided to ignore the international law of the sea, and assert claims based upon its nine-dash line map, which includes up to 85 per cent of the South China Sea.

Under the law of the sea, until an agreement has been reached between China and Viet Nam on the maritime boundary in overlapping maritime claims, the two States are under a legal obligation to make every effort to enter into provisional arrangements of a practical nature. The international law of the sea also imposes an obligation on China and Viet Nam not to undertake any unilateral activities that would jeopardise or hamper the negotiation of a final boundary agreement.

International tribunals have ruled that in an area of overlapping maritime claims, it is unlawful for one State to attempt to exploit the natural resources by drilling because such a unilateral activity would permanently change the status quo and thus jeopardise or hamper the negotiation of a final boundary agreement.

In its discussions with ASEAN on a legally binding Code of Conduct for the South China Sea (East Sea), China has consistently maintained that there must be full and effective implementation of the 1992 Declaration on Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC). However, China's act of unilateral drilling is a clear violation of the provision in the DOC which provides that the Parties undertake to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes.

It is hoped that China will soon understand that bullying neighbouring countries in violation of international law is not the way a responsible power behaves in the international arena.

Australian expert disagrees with China’s view on East Sea issue

Immediately after a number of Australian newspapers published articles written by two Chinese researchers and diplomats saying that Vietnam does not have legal sovereignty claims over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago, Professor Carlyle A. Thayer took issue with views advanced.

In a commentary, providing feedback to the editorial offices he rejected out of hand the views set forth in the articles, countering the false views as lacking a factual basis and nothing more than unsubstantiated speculation and opinion.

Concerning the article by Zhao Qinghai, Director of China Institute of International Studies’ Research Centre for Cooperation and Maritime Security, published in "the Australian Financial Review" on June 11, Thayer said that this commentary is not collaborated by academic research, but simply reiterates the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s policy.

He voiced his strong opposition to Qinghai’s argument that international law sides with China, as the oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981 is located in China’s adjacent regions.

The deployment of the drilling rig escorted by warships in the East Sea is a serious violation of international law and China should respond positively to Vietnam’s continued request, he emphasized.

Thayer also said that China is misinterpreting Prime Minister Pham Van Dong’s 1958 diplomatic note and Qinghai is propagating false information about the fact.

Concerning the article by Chinese Ambassador in Australia Ma Zhaoxu published on "The Australian" paper on June 13, Thayer said this is a controversial article as Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu has been selected for propagation of the current crisis surrounding the drilling rig in the East Sea. Thayer insisted that the stationing of the Chinese drilling rig violates international law.

Thayer stressed Ambassador Ma Zhaoxu’s commitment on cooperation with Vietnam to resolve the dispute is worth welcoming but the fact shows that after more than one month since China illegal placed its oil rig in Vietnam’s waters, Vietnam has received no positive response from Beijing in spite of its every effort.

Tackling Thailand's human trafficking problem

Ever since Myo's head was smashed into a block of ice he's had trouble hearing. The Burmese man, whose name has been changed for his safety, was on a fishing boat in Thailand last year when it happened.

He had left Myanmar, also known as Burma, thinking he was going to work in a factory processing pineapple. But when he arrived in Thailand, he says, his recruiters sold him to a boat captain for the equivalent of around $430. After being held on the vessel for 10 months, working against his will and suffering regular beatings, he finally managed to escape.

Myo's story features in the United States' latest report on countries efforts to fight modern slavery around the world. It echoes numerous other accounts told by trafficking survivors to international media and human rights groups in Thailand in recent years.Many are foreign migrants who report being forced into labor or prostitution; some face physical abuse or even death. The lucky ones escape or know someone who can pay the exorbitant price for their release.For four years the U.S. State Department has warned Thailand that it hasn't been doing enough to combat human trafficking. It said the country was a source, transit point and destination for trafficking, with ethnic minorities and citizens of neighboring countries at particular risk of exploitation in the sex trade and forced labor.

In the State Department's 2012 and 2013 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Thailand faced relegation to the worst category, but received waivers based on a plan to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards for eliminating trafficking.On Friday, when the State Department released its 2014 report, it automatically downgraded Thailand to the lowest possible ranking, after the country reached its limit of waivers and failed to show significant improvement.Read: U.S. downgrades four countries in trafficking reportNow, the Southeast Asian nation shares the "Tier 3" category with 22 other countries, putting it on par with the likes of North Korea, Syria and the Central African Republic.

Sihasak Phuangketkheow, the permanent secretary to Thailand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the move "a great disappointment.""I do know that Thailand has been doing much better than those countries in that category," he said. "So I ask U.S. whether Thailand should be in that category."Sihasak said Thailand will continue efforts to tackle this problem.The downgrade means Thailand could see the withdrawal of non-humanitarian U.S. assistance, and its opposition to funding from international institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Although anti-trafficking advocates, like the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, believe the U.S. is unlikely to impose such sanctions in practice to preserve security, and economic ties between the two nations.

Progress?

Thai authorities acknowledge there is a problem. "Human trafficking is one of the worst forms of human indignity and Thailand is committed to eliminating this inhumane exploitation," the Thai Ambassador to the United States, Vijavat Isarabhakdi, said in a recent press statement.But he insisted significant progress has been made in tackling the issue, and that efforts made in 2013 exceeded the State Department's criteria for an upgrade."We're not doing it just because it might impact our trade ... we think that it's a scourge that needs to be eradicated in Thailand and other countries," Isarabhakdi told CNN.

He pointed to the number of trafficking convictions -- 225 defendants were convicted in 2013, over four times more than the previous year. The government took legal action against more than 150 illegal labor recruitment companies for alleged corruption, forced labor, human trafficking and smuggling. The police carried out over 28,000 police inspections in workplaces suspected of being used for commercial sex and forced labor, he said."So in total, I think that we've been doing a lot, but we acknowledge the fact that much more needs to be done," he added.Yet Thailand's law enforcement efforts remain "insufficient" compared to the size of the issue, the State Department said.

"In Thailand, we have a lot of beginnings that will hopefully come to fruition, but the report doesn't look at promises, it looks at results," said Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. "In this coming year, we hope we'll see success with the new round of cases that there have been some arrests in. We're seeing some good numbers from police, but what happens when the prosecutors get the cases? What happened when the judges hear the cases?"

Prostitution, slavery at sea

Two of the biggest areas of concern are sex trafficking, and forced labor, especially in the fishing industry.

The majority of Thai victims identified during 2013 were found in the country's billion dollar sex industry, according to the State Department. The exact number of women and children exploited through prostitution in Thailand is unknown, but estimates from researchers and non-profit groups put the figure in the tens of thousands. Victims are subject to sex trafficking in venues that cater to local demand, along with establishments in tourist hubs like Bangkok and Chiang Mai that cater to foreigners, the State Department said.

Thailand is also the world's third-largest exporter of seafood. A 2013 study published by the U.N.'s International Labor Organization (ILO) found that 17% of around 600 fishermen in Thailand said they worked against their will and were unable to leave for threat of financial penalties, the threat of violence or being reporting to authorities. Around six in 10 migrants who had been forced to work on Thai fishing boats said they had seen the murder of another worker, according to a 2009 survey from the U.N. Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking.

Corruption

According to the State Department, Thailand's efforts to address trafficking are being hampered by "corruption at all levels." Some corrupt officials have even protected brothels and food processing facilities from raids and inspections, the TIP report said. Police officers at the local and national level, who had been assigned to regions notorious for trafficking, formed protective relationships with traffickers. Immigration officials and police have allegedly sold migrants who were unable to pay labor brokers and sex traffickers, according to the report.

"There are cases of suspected corruption, and in all the cases, investigations have been or are being carried out," Ambassador Isarabhakdi said. "At least 33 police officers and also five high-ranking police officials were, or are being, punished under the civil or criminal processes. So many of the cases are still in the process but many have been punished already."The State Department acknowledged Thailand has improved its system for collecting anti-trafficking data, but says authorities have demonstrated little effort in addressing reports of debt bondage among foreign migrants in commercial sectors, and have not made "sufficient efforts" to proactively identify trafficking victims.

It also warned that the use of harsh criminal defamation laws to prosecute those who researched or reported on trafficking "may have discouraged efforts" to combat the practice.Rohingya asylum seekersOne particular area of concern, according to the State Department, are reports of trafficking of Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority -- many of whom have fled ethnic and religious violence in the country in recent years and pass through neighboring countries, including Thailand. They are among those most vulnerable to being trafficked, the State Department says."We're concerned about the Rohingya -- the refugees and asylum seekers. We are concerned that some of them have been subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor," said CdeBaca. "We want the Thai government to investigate and duly address those things."

But when Thailand submitted its 2013 trafficking data to the United States for the Trafficking in Persons project in March, officials said they found no evidence that Rohingya were victims of trafficking, because their transit through Thailand was voluntary. This conflicted with reports from local NGOs and media groups: At least 40,000 ethnic Rohingya and Bangladeshis passed through trafficking camps in Thailand in 2013, according to Chris Lewa, director of the human rights group, the Arakan Project. Although she points out that it's a rough estimate because it's difficult to trace every single migrant boat.

On Friday, the Thai Ambassador to the U.S. told CNN that while most of the Rohingya cases involved willful smuggling, towards the end of the reporting period, December 2013, there were cases of trafficking also.

"Those cases are being investigated and will be dealt with in next year's report I'm sure," he said.

Thailand is not alone in struggling to demonstrate it is serious about fighting trafficking. Malaysia, its southern neighbor, has also been downgraded to Tier 3 in this year's report, and all other nations it shares borders with remain on the State Department's watch list.Countries like Thailand and Malaysia will need to show "results" if they want to get off the State Department's list next year, CdeBaca said.

South Korean military exchanges gunfire with soldier suspected of killing 5

The South Korean military exchanged gunfire with a soldier suspected of killing five of his comrades, a defense ministry official said Sunday.The military encountered the man identified as Sgt Lim near a checkpoint in northeastern Gangwon province, where the base shooting occurred a day earlier.

Gunfire erupted after the military surrounded him.About 60 shots rang out. The man's parents are there to persuade him to surrender, CNN affiliate YTN reported.One platoon leader was injured during the gunfight, according to YTN.

The man allegedly shot his comrades near the heavily fortified demilitarized zone bordering North Korea.

Authorities said he used a K2, a semiautomatic rifle that is a standard South Korean army weapon. It is similar to the U.S. military's standard weapon, the M16.