Secretary for Security: US Human Trafficking report “not true”

The recent ‘Trafficking in Persons Report’ released by the State Department of the United States contains information that is “not true” regarding the status of human trafficking in the SAR, according to a release by the Macau Secretary for Security.
This year’s Department of State report placed the SAR within the second tier of countries whose governments ‘do not fully meet the [Traffic Victims Protection Act] minimum standards but are making significant efforts to meet those standards.’
Tier 2 countries, according to the report, have a significant number of trafficking victims; have failed to improve or increase efforts to fight human trafficking since last year; or have made a commitment to meet the minimum standards from last year. This is the fourth year that Macau has been considered as a Tier 2 country by the United States government body.
In a release by the local Secretary for Security, the local government’s position is that there was a ‘bad interpretation’ and ‘unfounded allegations regarding the situation in Macau,’ the release stated.
Destination and transit territory
The human trafficking report claims the MSAR is: ‘primarily a destination and, to a much lesser extent, a transit territory for women and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor, with victims being attracted with false advertisements for jobs, including in casinos in Macau, but upon arrival are forced into prostitution’.
The report further claims that: ‘traffickers sometimes confine victims in massage parlors and illegal brothels, where they are closely monitored, threatened with violence, forced to work long hours, and have their identity documents confiscated,’.
The sexual exploitation of children in the gambling world within the territory was also considered troubling in the study, with the report criticizing the government for not reporting any investigations or prosecutions related to child sex tourism ‘despite the majority (four of six) of identified trafficking victims being child sex trafficking victims’.
The report considers that the local government hasn’t met the minimum standards in fighting the issue, but that it has made ‘significant efforts to do so,’ mentioning measures such as creating communication mechanisms for hotel employees to report potential trafficking situations directly to the police, and the allocation of MOP3.2 million (US$400,000) for human trafficking prevention.
The report also recommends that the MSAR government implement measures such as ‘a minimum wage for foreign domestic workers’ or surveys of the migrant labour population to identify its vulnerabilities to trafficking.
Different perceptions
‘The government does not accept the report, in regards to the unfounded comments about Macau, mentioning the fight against human trafficking, labour exploitation, sex tourism involving children and illicit activities practiced by its employees,’ the Secretary for Security stated in a press release.
The release also pointed to recent statistics related to human trafficking, stating numbers have ‘decreased regularly, keeping themselves low or almost zero’, thanks to government collaboration with civic associations and the tourism industry to fight the issue.
The creation of a Commission to Accompany Measures of Human Traffic Prevention (CAMDTP) was also mentioned by the government as a significant measure for achieving positive results in regards to this issue.