Russia, China, Turkey among those cited in US trafficking report | Al Jazeera

A US State Department report called out the governments of Myanmar, China and Russia for their patterns of trafficking and forced labour and saying in the Chinese province of Xinjiang “the government is the trafficker” citing “a mass detention and political indoctrination campaign against Uighurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups”, over the past four years.

The State Department report on global human trafficking released on Thursday also added Turkey, a NATO ally, to the list of countries whose “armed forces, police, or other security forces” recruit or use child soldiers.

The designation could mean sanctions on military aid or sales for those countries unless the US president issues a waiver.

“We document 11 countries where the government itself is the trafficker. For example, through forced labour on public works projects or in sectors of the economy that the government feels are particularly important,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a news conference.

“For the 10th year in a row, the report documents how the Cuban government has profited from exploitative overseas medical missions.”

In all, the Biden administration said, 17 countries were not doing enough to combat human trafficking.

The 2021 annual report also shone a spotlight on people made more vulnerable by global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and “systemic racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination” that create inequitable societies, Blinken said.

The annual Trafficking in Persons report (TIP), published since 2001, uses the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA) to define “severe” human trafficking as “sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such an act” is not 18.

The definition also includes “the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude”.

Though exact figures are unknown, “the estimate we often cite is that nearly 25 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking”, Blinken said.  “Many are compelled to commercial sex work. Many are forced to work in factories, or fields, or to join armed groups. Millions of trafficking victims are children. This crime is an affront to human rights.”..