Tough laws needed to fight slave trade
SINGAPORE: The horror of the 58 Chinese nationals who suffocated in a sealed truck trying to get into Britain through Dover is not going to slow down the modern-day slave trade. This is the bald truth. The sooner it is acknowledged by governments of prosperous recipient nations as much as countries of origin, the quicker can an international response be coordinated. As this is a trans-national matter, cutting across many jurisdictions and competing economic priorities, only the United Nations can manage it. A treaty along the lines of the 1951 Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees, to tackle a vicious new trend in serfdom, will permit signatory nations to strike at the nasty business uniformly. No individual government, not even a supra-national entity like the European Union (EU), can fight it alone. The reasons are clear. The trafficking is hugely lucrative, which is another way of saying that global crime syndicates will keep up the lively trade unless effective intervention troubles them enough.
An estimate by Europol, the EU's police agency, puts at US$9 billion (S$15 billion) the annual value of people-smuggling in Europe alone. It is safe to assume as brisk an inflow into the United States, a revitalized "golden mountain" that appeals to many East and South Asians. Only a fall in demand at two levels can see the flow diminish. One, desperate people are no longer desperate enough to flee economic privation and war zones. But far from, say, genocide in African nations and the Middle East petering out, or the millions of jobless in parts of Asia and the newly-liberated Eastern Europe being found work, the situation is getting grimmer. The other depressant is if service trades and municipalities in wealthy countries no longer need imported labor, legal or otherwise.
The opposite is true. The 15-nation EU needs an annual infusion of 1.6 million workers to make up for its low birth rate, simply to keep its working population stable between now and 2050. In a perverse way, organized crime is responding to labor flows, albeit low-end. Hence, Chinese snakeheads, the Russian mafia or Mexican border runners will get bolder and better organized, regardless of Dover-like setbacks. It is thus a law enforcement problem, not so much political. This is where action should be focused.
The Chinese government, reacting to the Dover discovery, could have been more pro-active. It asked for international co- operation to check human trafficking. How much has it done to smash as many snakeheads as it can find in its own backyard? Gangs in Fujian province reportedly ship out 100,000 people each year, usually through Russia and on to Europe and the United States. Governments can fight the scourge the way they fight the drug trade: tough laws and stiff penalties.
Political solutions are problematic. More liberal asylum procedures and work permits could conceivably make a dent in the trade, but governments all over the West are in retreat over immigration because of public opposition. Even making a distinction between different classes of people smuggling is not of much help in devising immigration policies. Many asylum seekers, who are protected by international law, are of dubious status; they could be economic refugees, who have no standing. Many illegal aliens in Europe entered legally, then overstayed. The lines separating asylum seekers, economic migrants and smuggled illegals have been blurred to such an extent that border control is effectively breaking down in many countries. Thus, Dover. More Dovers will emerge before the scale of the problem is reduced.
-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network