Washington: The United States has called on Asian governments to slap stiff penalties on labour traffickers, some of whom it said were exploiting loopholes in bilateral agreements in the region.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's senior adviser on the human trafficking problem yesterday said smugglers in the region deserved "potent penalties" rather than "mere slaps on the wrist" under agreements aimed at managing rising workers migration in the region.

"I would emphasise the need for those who are subject to labour trafficking, to forced labour to be granted justice in the form of the traffickers being punished not just through receiving suspended sentences or fines but serious penalties," Mark Lagon, the US envoy to combat human trafficking, said.

He said his office, which blacklists nations considered the worst offenders of human trafficking every year, had noticed a rise in the number of reported cases of labour trafficking.

North Korea, Myanmar and Malaysia are the three East Asian nations included in the State Department human trafficking blacklist last year.

On China, he cited issues such as child labour, the "relocation apparently through manipulation and force" of Uighur Muslim women from the Xinjiang region as well as the "victimisation" of North Korean refugees.

In India, there are "substantial problems" of sex trafficking, child labour and bonded labour, he said.

"While there had been some real efforts at victim protection in the areas of sex trafficking and child labour, efforts at enforcement, punishment of the traffickers have lagged and recognition of the breadth of bonded labour continues to be an area of omission by India," he said.
Source : PTI