The government has criticised the country's inclusion on a US list of the worst human trafficking offenders, and refuted claims it was not doing enough to tackle the problem.

Malaysia has been placed on Washington's "Tier 3" blacklist of countries, joining offenders such as Burma, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Sudan, a move which Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said was ill-informed.

"The whole situation in the report is prejudged without understanding the local position," Syed Hamid told AFP .

"It is their right to talk about Malaysia but in anything where it is not giving a true story about our country, we have the right to speak up," he said.

"The report is based on certain assumptions that are not valid, not legitimate."

Key United States trading partner Malaysia, along with six other nations, including US Middle East allies Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, appeared Tuesday on the list in the US State Department's annual "Trafficking in Persons Report."

Malaysia was cited for "failure to show satisfactory progress" in areas such as punishing acts of trafficking, providing adequate shelters and social services to victims, and protecting migrant workers from involuntary servitude, the report said.

"The Malaysian government needs to demonstrate stronger political will to tackle... significant forced labour and sex trafficking problems," it said.

Malaysia was not just a destination country but also a source and transit country, the report said.

Victims of sex trafficking in Malaysia, mainly women and girls, are from Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar and China.

Milestone legislation

Syed Hamid acknowledged that present Malaysian laws meant there is no distinction made between trafficked persons and illegal immigrants to the country.

But he said Malaysia's parliament would approve a milestone anti-trafficking bill which introduces a 20-year jail sentence for offenders as well as fines.

"With the new bill, I believe we are moving in the right direction," Syed Hamid said.

The Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) earlier criticised as unfair the country's inclusion but expressed concerns over the issue.

"I agree a lot more has to be done... but placing Malaysia in Tier 3 is not a very fair thing for the United States to do," commissioner N Siva Subramaniam told AFP .

Siva Subramaniam said Suhakam had repeatedly highlighted concerns over human trafficking and the treatment of migrant workers to the government.

He also said Suhakam was effectively unable to act on the issue, since the government body had no enforcement powers.

And while Malaysia already has some laws in place to deal with trafficking crimes, Siva Subramaniam said inadequate policing was an issue in tackling the problem.

"It's a question of enforcing the law and creating more enforcement officers," he said.

Malaysian ministers acknowledged earlier this year that human trafficking had become a worrying problem and that the country could become a hotspot for the crime.

Ministerial response in Parliament

In an immediate reaction, Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang said Syed Hamid should give a detailed ministerial statement in Parliament on Monday on the government's inclusion in the blacklist.

"In the ministerial statement, Syed Hamid should give a full report of the exchanges between the two governments on the issue, as there must be considerable interaction between the two governments before the inclusion of Malaysia in the US government list of human trafficking offenders," he said in a statement.

"Let the entire file of the bilateral exchanges be made public," he added.

Lim also said the MPs would want to know why the enactment of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Bill in April had proved to be fruitless and resulted instead in Malaysia being included in the US government list of human trafficking offenders.

In a separate statement, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng said the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, which was singled out in the report for not doing enough to help the victims of human trafficking, should explain its failures.

He said that the minister concerned, Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, should explain her ministry's failures in six critical areas. They being:

  • punishing human trafficking acts,

  • providing adequate shelters and social services to victims,

  • protecting migrant workers from involuntary servitude,

  • failing to establish a government-run shelter for foreign trafficking victims despite promises made in December 2004 and August 2006.

  • lack of procedures for the identification of victims have also caused some trafficking victims to be treated as illegal immigrants; and

  • not prosecuting traffickers who were arrested and detained under preventive laws.