Hong Kong authorities have slammed a US State Department report on human trafficking that said the local government was not up to par with US standards, though was making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance.
Hong Kong was moved up from the “Tier 2 Watch List” to “Tier 2,” a reassessment that reflected a “positive change that reflects the city’s overall progress in and commitment to combatting trafficking in persons,” the US Consulate General Hong Kong & Macau said in a statement issued Friday morning.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in the report published on Wednesday: “We will continue to improve and adapt our efforts to combat this crime, and build stronger partnerships with governments, businesses, survivor leaders, and NGOs.”
Blinken is set to travel to Beijing this weekend to meet with Chinese officials, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink told reporters during a teleconference this Wednesday.
Hong Kong making ‘significant efforts’
According to the report, traffickers from countries including Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and the Philippines used fake job listings to recruit adults and children from dozens of countries. Hong Kong is listed as one of the regions from which residents are trafficked into other countries.
The State Department report lists five tier rankings in descending order — Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List, Tier 3, and Special Cases. Residents in countries or regions listed under Tier 1 are at the lowest risk of getting trafficked to another place, and those listed under Special Cases are at the highest risk.
There are 30 regions listed under Tier 1, including the UK, the US, Singapore, Taiwan, and France, whose governments fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking stipulated by the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA).
There are 106 regions under Tier 2, which includes Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Greece, Ireland, Israel, and Korea. Those governments “do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.”
Tier 3 includes 24 regions whose governments are said to not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and China.
Trafficking not a ‘prevalent problem’
Hong Kong authorities slammed the State Department in a statement issued on the same day, saying it “vehemently refuted” its assessment and that human trafficking was “never a prevalent problem” in the city.
The Hong Kong government statement read: “We noted the rating of Hong Kong is adjusted upward to Tier 2 in the Report. The HKSAR Government strongly disapproves of and firmly rejects the unsubstantiated remarks in the US’ Report against the situation of Hong Kong.”
The statement also read that 7,600 initial screenings were conducted with 32 trafficking victims identified, 31 of whom were trafficked out of Hong Kong into Southeast Asian countries as part of employment scams.
“The swift identification of 31 victims from the employment fraud, in particular, speaks for the effectiveness of the HKSAR Government’s TIP [Trafficking in Persons] victim screening mechanism and the fact that TIP is never tolerated in Hong Kong,” the statement read.
The release of the State Department report came months after a spate of human trafficking cases last year, during which Hongkongers were trafficked to Southeast Asian nations including Cambodia and Myanmar.
In the wake of the trafficking incidents, a legal scholar said Hong Kong should enact laws to target human trafficking.
Patricia Ho, principal lecturer at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law and founder of Hong Kong Dignity Institute, told HKFP in August that she had been contesting the government’s claim last year that human trafficking was “never a prevalent problem” in the city.
She said the lack of relevant provisions had led to the conclusion that it was not a problem, as a lack of data would show that there are no crimes recorded.
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