Rights activists criticise Malaysia’s improved ranking

Rights activists have criticised Malaysia's improved ranking on the US State Department's Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report despite the exploitative conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi migrant workers.

On Monday, the TIP report upgraded Malaysia, which was earlier relegated to the lowest level, Tier 3, in 2021 for widespread migrant labour abuses inside its factories and plantations, to the Tier 2 category. Last year, Malaysia was in the Tier 2 watchlist grouping.

The annual report ranks governments based on their efforts to acknowledge and combat human trafficking and remains one of the few global indices with teeth as it can trigger US sanctions for the worst offending nations.

"Based on years of unsuccessfully engaging the Malaysian government on cases of alleged human trafficking and forced labour, I strongly disagree with today's tier 2 upgrade for the country," said migrant rights activist Andy Hall in a statement.

A failed migrant work management and recruitment system -- that promotes impunity, is devoid of the rule of law and is systemically corrupt -- continues to exist in Malaysia, said the Nepal-based British activist who researches migration in Southeast Asia.

"There is little to no accountability for this dire situation, and no remediation at all of its victims," he added.

Malaysia's systemic inability to meaningfully combat labour trafficking, ensure remediation of victims and accountability of perpetrators indeed warranted its immediate downgrade today to Tier 3 in the 2024 TIP Report, he said.

"Today's upgrade is therefore disappointing and raises for me genuine concern about the legitimacy and accuracy of the US government's country-based human trafficking assessments."

In April, independent experts said the conditions of Bangladeshi migrants were "unsustainable and undignified" warning that "certain high-level officials" in both Malaysia and Bangladesh "are involved in this business or condoning it".

At the end of May, thousands of migrant workers from Bangladesh rushed to Malaysia to beat a hard deadline of May 31 for them to enter there.

Despite the TIP upgrade, the Malaysian government still has to sort out other "blunders" in how it handles migration, Adrian Pereira of the North-South Initiative in Kuala Lumpur told Channel News Asia.

Successive Malaysian administrations have refused to adopt proposals made by the Independent Committee on the Management of Foreign Workers that was filed by a committee of former judges, lawyers and other experts as early as 2019.

"They refused to adopt the recommendations, meaning either the politicians or the civil servants were conniving to ensure the status quo. [Anwar Ibrahim's administration] has to take it seriously, they can't think that they can do business as usual," Pereira said.