Tier game of US State Department
THE US State Department downgraded Bangladesh to Tier 2 Watch List from Tier 2 in their Trafficking in Persons Report 2009, through a system that ranks countries whose governments do not fully comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act's minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to comply with those standards.
This Tier 2 Watch List is just one step short of the most heinous one -- Tier 3 -- that automatically makes a country vulnerable to different sanctions imposed by the US. As a labour-sending country we are in the same branded category as India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and 47 other countries.
In the diagnosis part of the report, it says that a significant number of trafficking victims are people going abroad on "fraudulent employment offers" and landing up with "forced labour or debt bondage." It says that boys and girls are trafficked within a country for sexual exploitation, bonded labour and forced labour. Some children are even sold by their parents, while others succumb to fraud and physical coercion.
They categorically branded BAIRA, trade-body of over 700 recruiting agencies, for trafficking of people through legal channels to Middle East countries and Malaysia at placement cost of $1,235 -- sometimes more. They get as low a salary as $100-150 per month, which, as per ILO report, compels them to bonded labour or forced labour. It also mentions some NGOs' reports on recruitment fraud and false contracts leading to labour trafficking.
The US State Department suggested integration of objectives in anti-trafficking policies and programs, and increased criminal prosecution and punishment for all forms of trafficking, including fraudulent overseas recruitment, etc.
Interestingly, nowhere did US itself figure in the Tier list. They branded 173 countries, including even their close ally UK, at Tier 1, but not themselves. In the briefing ceremony on June 16, Ambassador Luis CdeBaca, a director of the State Department, simply mentioned that US's trafficking scenario had been placed in their Congress.
This double standard, separating US from the rest of the world, caused retorts from leaders across the globe. Kuwaiti National Assembly Speaker Jassem Al-Khorafi made a statement on June 18 harshly criticising the United States for placing Kuwait in Tier 3. "I have repeatedly said that Kuwait is not a country of angels, but what hurts me is that the United States thinks itself to be a country of angels," al-Khorafi told reporters.
He went on to say that the report depicted Kuwait wrongly, stating that the US "is not the world's police and not a guardian of the world." Many world leaders share such a sentiment.
The history of US does not give it the right to be the moral guardian of the world. Settlers from Europe, mostly political outcasts, did away with the Red Indians in no time. To see Red Indians now we have to visit enclaves that are more like zoos. Illegal torture in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq andAfghanistan, sending suspects for torture to Syria (whom they now place in Tier-3), secret detention camps in Europe, etc., are but few examples of abuse of humanity by US. This self-proclaimed guardianship and unsolicited sermons are not looked at with love and affection.
No country in the world, be it democratic or totalitarian, supports human trafficking, and countries like ours are striving hard to uphold human dignity even with all our limitations. The tone and tenor of Trafficking in Persons Report of the US State Department seems to convey that Bangladesh, especially its recruiting agencies, is primarily engaged in human trafficking and that the 6.5 million expatriates sent by the agents are trafficked. That trafficking in the guise of legal migration is the order of the day is being actively propagated by our NGOs.
That people from Bangladesh are going on jobs abroad under an accountable legal regime, that our embassies in destination countries, equipped with legal retainers, are primarily mandated to look after expatriates, that the country has enough legal instruments and capabilities to address genuine cases of trafficking, that recruiting agents are operating and accountable under Emigration Ordinance 1982, that the Bureau of Manpower Employment & Training (BMET) is scrutinising each and every migrant and giving pre-departure briefing, did not, surprisingly, have any effect on the report.
The branding game is not without reason. With the motivated feedbacks from cohorts in NGOs, they need to belittle countries trying to break out from poverty and deprivation, to keep them on tenterhooks so that the US can rule the world by proxy. A resounding answer is always given by China (placed in Tier 2 Watch List). With their thousands of years of wisdom, they simply give a damn to the branding ploy of Uncle Sam.
It is high time for the government to take a new look at our rights-based NGOs. Knowingly and unknowingly, they blow up minor issues out of proportion, instigate garments and expatriate workers, feed half-truths to branding agencies like the US State Department, Human Rights Commission, etc.
In their urge to win projects and funds, they hardly keep the interest of the country in mind. We have witnessed how they financed and organised sit-in demonstrations of returned migrant workers in the lounge of the airport, even after the government's and BAIRA's assurances of compensation.
The growth of NGOs in Bangladesh was stupendous and, at present, for every 19,000 people there is one NGO. Unless something is done to contain NGOs, Bangladesh will very soon say goodbye to two sectors -- garments and manpower -- where we are competitive in the global market. Moreover, we will continue to face branding irritations from guardian angels.
Comments