Forced labor and sexual exploitation have increased as the trend
in human trafficking in China has taken a turn for the worst.
That is the assessment of a senior public security official who
was talking on the loopholes in the country's labor system and
Criminal Law yesterday.
Yin Jianzhong, a senior official of the anti-trafficking office
of the Ministry of Public Security, said: "Forced labor and sexual
exploitation are the two new outcomes of human trafficking in China
and the number of such cases is rising."
The number of forced laborers and the sexually exploited has
risen partly because of the loopholes in the legal and labor
systems, he added.
The Criminal Law on human trafficking protects women and
children only and leaves out grown-up and teen males. It doesn't
have provisions for punishing those trafficking people for forced
labor or prostitution, Yin said.
Analyzing the reasons behind the increase in forced labor and
sexual exploitation cases, Allan Dow, International Labor
Organization's Communications Officer of Mekong Project to Combat
Trafficking in Children and Women, said: "Trafficking is not just
about sex and baby selling, it is also about labor and sexual
exploitation.
"Countries the size of China will have difficulty in fighting
such trafficking."
The fast economic growth of China and movement of a large number
of people within the country and imbalanced regional development
have increased labor and sexual exploitation, Dow said.
But the number of children and women trafficked to continue "the
family line" or be forced into marriage has been declining in
recent years, thanks to crackdowns that began in the 1980s.
"The selling of women and children has been checked," Yin said.
The number of such cases has been dropping 20 to 30 percent a
year.
About 3,000 such cases are reported to police across the country
every year, he said. But the number may not give the entire picture
because many cases go unreported.
Trafficking in women and children is most serious in Guangdong,
Fujian, Henan, Sichuan and Anhui provinces.
To facilitate legislation and fight human trafficking of all
kinds, the ministry set up an anti-trafficking office again early
this month, Yin said. It was first set up to tackle the problem
that reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s.
Though the biggest problem for China is the movement of a large
number of people, cross-border trafficking too is a cause for
worry, Dow said.
(China Daily July 27, 2007)