Anti-trafficking Bill ‘can do more’ to protect victims’ rights

SINGAPORE — A proposed law to tackle the problem of human trafficking does not place enough emphasis on victims’ rights and this may deter them from making a report against their traffickers, said a group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) yesterday.

The Prevention of Human Trafficking Bill — tabled in Parliament earlier this month — focuses more on prevention and prosecution, said the six NGOs spearheading the StopTraffickingSG campaign.

They told a press conference that the Bill — introduced by Member of Parliament Christopher de Souza (Holland-Bukit Timah GRC) — would be more effective if it protects the rights of trafficked victims such that they feel safe and empowered to report on their traffickers and assist in investigations.

The NGOs behind the anti-trafficking campaign are the Association of Women for Action and Research, Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME), Transient Workers Count Too, Maruah, Project X and the Singapore Committee for UN Women.

Since August, StopTraffickingSG has been running a campaign to include three additional clauses in the Bill that would guarantee victims the right to adequate social support such as accommodation, counselling and medical care; protection from prosecution for offences committed while being trafficked; and access to employment while their cases are being investigated.

HOME’s executive director Jolovan Wham said: “A victim-centric approach is instrumental if we want to effectively prosecute traffickers. We have seen several cases of trafficked victims refusing to report their traffickers because we could not guarantee them these rights, especially the right to work.”

While only 20 cases have been referred to the Singapore Inter-Agency Taskforce on Trafficking in Persons since August last year, there are many others that could not be highlighted because the victims do not want to be identified, he added.

Dispelling traditional notions of trafficked victims who are illegally brought into Singapore to do forced labour, Mr Wham said many victims the NGOs encountered came to Singapore willingly to work, but had been deceived about the nature or conditions of their work.

They found themselves unable to leave because of large recruitment debts or threats made against them or their families.

Ms Tan Peck Hoon, StopTraffickingSG’s campaign manager, said the Bill seems to have a bias towards protecting the “perfect victims” — trafficked female sex workers — but they are not reflective of the spectrum of victims in Singapore.

“(Lawmakers) are forgetting that there are foreign domestic workers; there’re also male labour trafficked victims. These are overshadowed in the emphasis on police rescue (and) underlying bias in the belief that most of our trafficked victims are trafficked for sex work,” she added.

StopTraffickingSG also pointed out that discretionary powers given to the police and non-police enforcement officers — to arrest and forcibly gain entry to premises without warrants — should be curbed as they could further traumatise victims, especially during raids.

Ms Vanessa Ho, coordinator of Project X, which works regularly with sex workers, argued against using raids as a way to seek out victims as these are usually violent proceedings. “Instead of promoting the use of rescuing trafficked victims (such as through raids), we need to realise that there should be an emphasis on the safeguarding and upholding of victims’ rights to empower them to report the crimes against them,” she said.

The group is also concerned about the lack of or insufficient definitions of key trafficking indicators in the Bill, such as deception, forced labour and abuse of vulnerability. Without clear definitions, it would be difficult to identify victims and prosecute traffickers, said Mr Wham.

Acknowledging that it is still a step in the right direction, he added: “I think with continued engagement with the authorities and as we work together on this issue, the Bill will evolve into a piece of legislation that will be more comprehensive and uphold the rights of trafficked victims.”