WASHINGTON – Last week, Malaysian authorities announced the discovery of 28 sites that they suspected had served as human trafficking camps. Days earlier, they had found 139 grave sites, many apparently filled with the bodies of dead migrants who had been smuggled from Myanmar; survivors recounted months of being penned in cages while friends and relatives died around them of disease and starvation.
The revelations are coming at an awkward time for the Obama administration, which is pressing to include Malaysia in a massive trade deal between the United States and a dozen nations around the Pacific Rim.
Democrats are trying to use the proposed trade accord as leverage to stop these recurring instances of human trafficking – but the White House is pushing back in an attempt to smooth the already rocky path towards final ratification.
Negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an expansive trade deal with 12 nations that encompasses everything from Internet policy to financial services, have been underway for much of his presidency. Trade between the parties accounts for nearly 40 percent of global commerce, and an agreement could become an important part of Obama’s economic legacy.
A vote in the House could come this week. The Senate approved a version that excludes Malaysia and other countries with poor human rights records. Lawmakers who want to bar such nations argue that the United States should force them to improve before granting the economic privileges a trade deal confers.
Malaysia had been on the State Department’s watch list of countries with trafficking problems until 2014, when repeated failures to take corrective action landed the nation a spot on a U.S. list of bad actors, along with Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Migrant women recruited to work from countries like Cambodia and Thailand often find themselves compelled into prostitution, and whole industries depend on forced labor – 28 percent of workers in electronics production are there against their will, according to a 2014 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor.
That’s why Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., sought to exclude Malaysia from the trade pact, which would lower tariffs to zero on most traded good, until the nation gets itself off the State Department’s list of worst cases. He attached an amendment to a Senate bill that denies expedited consideration of any trade agreement that includes countries on that list, meaning the Trans-Pacific Partnership essentially couldn’t clear Congress with Malaysia as a party.
From the White House’s perspective, that would be problematic. President Barack Obama has argued that keeping countries like Malaysia in America’s economic orbit, rather than China’s, is geopolitically essential – especially when it comes to control of trade routes like the Straits of Malacca, where Malaysia’s cooperation is critical. Plus, the U.S. trade representative says that it’s hard enough for some of these countries to make the legal changes that the agreement would eventually require. Malaysian President Najib Razak is facing domestic political difficulties already, and putting up even higher hurdles to ratification might mean the country never gets there at all.
Enter Ways &Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. He stepped in to broker a compromise, reflecting the scrambled politics of trade policy, where Congress’ Republican leadership is allied with the president against members of his own party. Ryan committed to a legislative maneuver that would allow Malaysia to remain part of the pact, as long as the secretary of state certifies that the country is taking “concrete steps” to combat trafficking. That way, the administration says, Malaysia would see some benefits for taking politically difficult action to solve the problem.
“We believe the best approach to our goal of combating trafficking is to provide a pathway to these countries that will actually result in meaningful steps being taken,” said a spokesman for the U.S. trade representative.
However, Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich., the Ways and Means Committee ranking member who has taken the lead in trying to make sure the Trans-Pacific Partnership has labor standards that could actually be enforced, says that Malaysia must be required to get its act together in advance, to make sure it happens at all.
“Instead of being satisfied with a letter that says that actions are being taken, Congress should insist that Malaysian laws and practices change to meet international standards before we vote,” Levin said in a statement.
Human rights groups are split on the question of whether it makes sense to allow the State Department to decide what qualifies as adequate progress. The Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, a U.S.-based coalition of organizations that work on migrant rights issues, expressed support for the compromise. But Human Rights Watch, an international non-governmental watchdog group, says that with the huge amount of political pressure around concluding the trade negotiations, simply allowing the State Department to decide whether Malaysia passes muster could result in no significant change at all.
“Our concern is, instead of getting serious about fighting trafficking, they work together to come up with words as opposed to deeds as concrete steps,” says Human Rights Watch Asia Advocacy Director John Sifton. “That stuff never works. I don’t care about plans. Everybody should have plans, but plans don’t mean you’re fighting trafficking.”
The Malaysian government offers a case in point. Human trafficking is illegal there, and there is a police unit devoted to tracking down violators. But prior to last week, law enforcement had denied repeatedly that trafficking camps existed. And yet, authorities who announced the discovery of the sites said the sites appeared to have been in use for five years in a security zone. According to the State Department, the government had not reported any investigations of its own personnel for abetting the problem. And officials there have resisted giving migrants too many rights, for fear of attracting even more to their shores.
Still, there are differences of opinion in the community of Democrats committed to human rights over whether trade is the right way to address human trafficking. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., a member of the Lantos Human Rights Commission—essentially the House’s caucus on human rights issues, worries that the trafficking amendment is just another way for opponents to throw up roadblocks.
“It would be a tough vote for me,” Connolly says. “The question is whether this is the right venue to legislate that issue. The con side sees it as another opportunity to derail the legislation, and the pro side is concerned that we not do that.”
In the meantime, both sides are awaiting the release of the State Department’s annual human rights report, which is mandated by Congress. The report is likely to outline the ways in which parties to the agreement like Malaysia, Brunei, and especially Vietnam suppress their citizens’ rights, and its release could further fuel the debate.
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