Human Trafficking: A Crisis of Representation and Law Enforcement
Neroli Austin and Misa Han explore the bondage, deception and migration of sex workers.
At King’s Cross, Sydney’s red light district, sandwiched between strip clubs and all-night kebab shops are brothels and ‘massage parlours’, where female migrants are kept for sexual servitude. Without a passport or a means to fight the constant threats of rape and beating, the migrant women represent part of the global slave trade movement that exists beyond Ben Hur and the Atlantic Slave Trade.
The Australian Dream?
Jetsadophorn Chaladone was 13 when she left her home in Thailand to work as a nanny in Australia. Instead, upon arrival in Sydney, she was placed in a brothel, where she was saddled with a $35,000 ‘debt’, or 600 ‘jobs’ to do. 10 days later, she had already serviced about 100 clients. She was deported back to Thailand, where, in the absence of appropriate laws, no criminal charges were laid against her traffickers. The story is altogether too familiar: young women leaving home to pursue a better life abroad, often hoping they will be able to send money home to assist their families, are unaware of the conditions that will greet them upon arrival. Some women come to Australia voluntarily to work as nannies or bartenders, just as Australian women go to teach English in Japan, only to find they have a ‘debt’ upwards of $50,000 dollars, which is to be paid off by doing 500 to 1000 ‘jobs’. Victims report working up to 20 hours a day to service clients. If they are lucky, they will have one free day to earn money to send home, with the brothel owner still taking a 70 per cent cut. All the while, threats of alerting Australian immigration authorities, as well as physical and emotional abuse, keep them chained to the bed.
In 2007, Chaladone finally found relief in a landmark decision by the Victims Compensation Tribunal of NSW, in which she was awarded damages for the “moderate to severe depressive disorder” she suffered as a result of her experience in Sydney. It was a marked change from her first experience with the Australian legal system in 1995. How has Australian law evolved over the past decade to combat human trafficking, and what issues remain unresolved?
Laying Down the Law
Legislative reform relating to trafficking commenced in 1999 with the Criminal Code Amendment (Slavery and Sexual Servitude) Act, which introduced offences for slavery, sexual servitude, and deceptive recruiting for sexual services into the Criminal Code Act 1995. At the urging of NGOs such as Project Respect, further reforms were passed in 2005 through the Criminal Code Amendment (Trafficking in Persons) Act, which included offences for child trafficking and ‘debt bondage’, punishable by up to 25 years’ imprisonment.
In September 2005, Australia ratified the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (especially Women and Children), as was promised with the passage of the reform legislation. Currently, there are 117 signatories. Notably absent are China, Malaysia, and North Korea. Problematically, these three nations are starting points for trafficking within the Asia-Pacific region. Moreover, despite the potential that this protocol represents, many of the signatories made reservations regarding Article 15, Paragraph 2, which allows disputes between two signatories to go before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This article not only limits the scope of the Protocol, but also highlights the fact that signing the instrument may well be an empty gesture.
“Victims fear approaching the authorities for help, as this could also lead to detention and subsequent deportation.”
Complementing toothless laws is a lack of political will. In many cases, countries see the prosecution of foreigners engaging in sex tourism as sufficient to appease the international community, while continuing to allow human trafficking within their borders. This is particularly alarming given that the number of prosecutions for human trafficking in the Asian-Pacific region has halved since 2005. Mu Sochua, the former minister for Women’s Affairs in Cambodia, observes that the number of annual prosecutions of Cambodian nationals and foreigners is roughly equal, despite estimates that 70 per cent of the demand is local. She observes: “It is easier to catch a foreigner and also the government wants to have showcases to make itself look good – that Cambodia is actually taking care of this problem of human trafficking, which is really not the truth.”
One of the greatest issues for the international community is reconciling the need to use aid as a political motivator for change, such as through the Australian-funded program for Asia Regional Cooperation to Prevent People Trafficking, with the reality that poverty is one of the major catalysts for trafficking, and so to deny aid is merely to perpetuate the problem.
Short-Changed?
Even though legal reforms have allowed for significant prosecutions, there still remain issues relating to the availability of visas to support victims’ recovery. In 2003, the Australian Government released its Action Plan to Eradicate Trafficking of Persons, which included a $20 million dollar package and visa support for victims. However, in order to be eligible for a visa, the victim needs to cooperate with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in the viable prosecution of traffickers. Jennifer Burn, of the Anti-Slavery Project at the University of Technology, Sydney, says: “because the visas are so difficult to obtain, […] trafficking victims will be placed in immigration detention centres if they cannot give the police sufficient evidence to lead to a prosecution. Fear of detention has deterred women from voluntarily coming forward to give evidence to the police and possibly support a criminal prosecution.”
The current legislation works as a double-edged sword. Victims fear approaching the authorities for help, as this could also lead to detention and subsequent deportation. The statistics of successful prosecutions are alarmingly low: as of May 2007, of the 125 cases of human trafficking investigated by the AFP, only 10 had been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
How to Ask for ‘Help’ in Thai
Changes in the legislation do not necessarily translate into immediate compensation for victims. Language is one of the most obvious barriers that victims face. The human trafficking hotline is answered by the AFP’s English-speaking switchboard operator. Even Project Respect, a leading non-governmental organisation that promotes the interests of foreign sex workers, does not have a multilingual website. An immigrant child who attends school regularly could take up to six months to master enough language skills and confidence to ask for an interpreter. It could be even more difficult for a victim to acquire the language skills necessary to ask for an interpreter, let alone to communicate his or her circumstance.
A lack of lingual support means that, by the time that victims receive help, violence, rape and exploitation have already taken place. Women are most likely to seek help while they are seeking an escape route, before they become desensitised to violence and lose the psychological strength to escape their situation. Italy’s national ‘Numero Verde’ (green number) – with hotlines in Albanian, Bulgarian, English, French, Russian, Romanian and Spanish – offers a model that Australia could adopt to ensure it reaches those women who most need help.
“Only the Cost of a Lousy Second-Hand Car, Really!”
The recent developments in the Australian government’s policies mirror the popular perception of the crisis as an ‘Asian prostitute murder mystery’. The investigation does not begin until after the trafficking has taken place, and the remedies are reactive rather than proactive. The media representation of human trafficking as a crime by an Asian migrant against an Asian woman, mediated by Asian parents who ‘sell’ their children into slavery, localises what is an transnational crisis, and stems popular misconceptions within Australian society.
“The media representation of human trafficking localises what is a transnational crisis.”
Conspicuously absent in the public discourse are the predominantly white, Australian, male customers who generate the demand for sex slavery. When this group is mentioned, its members often assume the role of benevolent gentlemen who rescue damsels in distress by offering support and assistance with immigration procedures.
Human trafficking represents ‘home delivery’ sex tourism and cannot be viewed in isolation from the racialised image of Asian women in Western culture. From the Google advertisements for Asian mail-order brides, to a film that invokes the Thai victims of domestic violence for humorous effect, pop culture normalises sexual exploitation and violence against Asian women. Project Respect further argues that one of the prominent reasons for the trafficking of Asian women to Australia is the “racialised ideas that Asian women have certain qualities, for example that they are more compliant and will accept higher levels of violence.” In his book War of the Sexes (1992), Ken Morgan, who married a Filipina bride after three divorces, writes: “You will need about $3000 or maybe a bit more … It’s not a lot of money compared to what you earn in twelve months, only the cost of a lousy second-hand car, really!” Although Morgan’s book was written almost 20 years ago, the prevalence of this attitude is evident in the higher-than-average level of violence faced by the victims.
The cultural insensitivity and racialised perceptions that penetrate even the media were initially produced to raise awareness of the crisis. The 2005 TV mini-series Human Trafficking followed a team sent to search for a virtuous, white, American girl who was kidnapped for the purposes of sexual servitude in the Philippines. Unfortunately, this portion of the series was shot in Thailand with actors and extras who were obviously Thai. Such refusals to acknowledge variances in language and culture typify the view of Asians as a racial group, rather than as oppressed individuals with specific grievances, and serve to prevent the public from responding to the victims appropriately.
Conclusion
Despite the successes of the past decade, many challenges remain: we need a legal framework that does not criminalise victims, as well as more long-term solutions aimed at reaching out to victims and changing popular attitudes within Australia. The financial crisis brings with it more concerns for trafficking in the region, as Foreign Minister Stephen Smith commented in April 2009: “The severe downturn in the world economy will push more migrants into the hands of people traffickers as they seek better lives abroad.”
