Photo from TradeJustice.net
NEW YORK — Angry about Malaysia’s recent upgrade by the United States from the lowest tier on its list of worst human trafficking centers, about 40 of human rights activists held a demonstration outside the Consulate General of Malaysia in New York City on Tuesday.
Last week, the U.S. upgraded Malaysia to so-called “Tier 2 Watch List” status, a move that could smooth the way for an ambitious U.S.-led free-trade deal with the Southeast Asian nation and 11 other countries.
Malaysia hopes to be a signatory to Obama’s legacy-defining Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would link a dozen countries, cover 40 percent of the world economy and form a central element of his strategic shift towards Asia.
“In this case our government, our president, our State Department is rubber-stamping some of the worst human rights violations that we can find anywhere on the face of the Earth,” said Jamie Kemmerer of MoveOn.org.
He added, “About two million people, it’s estimated, are actually in slavery or human trafficking in Malaysia right now. So the idea that you would upgrade them from tier three to tier two, simply so that they could sign, is something that is very troubling to a lot of human rights activists.”
In May, just as Obama’s drive to win “fast-track” trade negotiating authority for his trade deal entered its most sensitive stage in the U.S. Congress, Malaysian police announced the discovery of 139 graves in jungle camps used by suspected smugglers and traffickers of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar.
The State Department last year downgraded Malaysia in its annual “Trafficking in Persons” report to Tier 3, alongside North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe, citing “limited efforts to improve its flawed victim protection regime” and other problems.
Some U.S. lawmakers and human-rights advocates had expected Malaysia to remain on Tier 3 this year given its slow pace of convictions in human-trafficking cases and pervasive trafficking in industries such as electronics and palm oil.
Bernadette Ellorin of Bayan USA said free trade agreements, like the TPP, will further exploit the labor market and create the conditions for more human trafficking.
“What free trade agreements like the TPP essentially do is that they basically break our economies into a million pieces. They condition our economies to be, through liberalization and deregulation and privatization and essentially denationalization, our economies no longer provide for us. They provide for the global market and that includes the labor markets,” said Ellorin.
The rally also came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to attend this week’s meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur.