If an abducted woman was then forced into prostitution, the penalties increased to 10 years’ to life imprisonment, fines, and confiscation of property. • In conjunction with receiving countries, increase efforts to detect and prevent abusive migrant labor contract provisions placing PRC national workers at higher risk of forced labor. The government expanded this campaign through the transfer of more than 80,000 detainees into forced labor in as many as 19 other provinces during the reporting period, according to NGO estimates and media reports. The government continued to address some of these vulnerabilities by requiring local governments to provide a mechanism for migrant workers to obtain residency permits. Traffickers target adults and children with developmental disabilities and children whose parents have left them with relatives to migrate to the cities—estimated at more than 60 million—and subject them to forced labor and forced begging. However, during the report period there was a government policy or pattern of widespread forced labor, including through the continued mass arbitrary detention of more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and other Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang). 11 May 2020 This file photo taken on 27 October, 2018 shows Ly Thi My, a Vietnamese mother posing with a photograph of her missing daughter Di at her house in Meo Vac, a mountainous border district between Vietnam's Ha Giang province and China. These penalties were sufficiently stringent. A small number of PRC national women are reportedly subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor via forced or fraudulent marriages to Taiwan men. The government decreased law enforcement efforts, including by continuing to apply extensive law enforcement and paramilitary resources toward the mass detention and forced labor of Uyghurs and members of Muslim and other ethnic and religious minority groups. Authorities continued to carry out discriminatory surveillance and ethno-racial profiling measures to illegally detain members of these communities in internment camps under the pretext of combating violent extremism. State-sponsored forced labor continued under the government’s mass detention and political indoctrination campaign against more than one million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, ethnic Kyrgyz, and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. During the reporting period, the government maintained consultative partnerships with law enforcement authorities in Mongolia and the five Lower Mekong countries to jointly address trafficking via the forced and fraudulent marriage of their citizens to PRC-based individuals. In previous years, officials found guilty through this process reportedly faced expulsion from the Chinese Communist Party, termination of their official positions, fines, and referral to the judicial system. Authorities in some localities also subject the families of men arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang to forced labor in their absence. Traffickers subject PRC national women and girls to sex trafficking throughout the world, including in major cities, construction sites, remote mining and logging camps, and areas with high concentrations of PRC national migrant workers. Both girls are feared to have been sold as child brides. • Cease the use of harassment, threats, and illegal discriminatory immigration policies as measures to coerce the return to Xinjiang and subsequent forced labor of ethnic and religious minorities living abroad. He co-founded the Human Trafficking Institute and, prior to that, served for more than 10 years as a federal prosecutor in the US Department of Justice’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit. Catalog; Home feed; The Phnom Penh Post. Journalist in Inner Mongolia. Media reports, however, suggested authorities continued to investigate some cases. Traffickers promise African and South American women legitimate jobs in the PRC and force them into commercial sex upon arrival. Samuel D. Brownback is Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. Article 240 criminalized “the abduction and sale of women or children,” which included abduction by deceit, kidnapping, purchasing, selling, sending, receiving, and transferring for the purpose of sale; however, unlike the definition of trafficking in persons under international law, Article 240 did not explicitly link these acts to a purpose of exploitation. For the third consecutive year, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) did not report the number of investigations initiated into possible trafficking cases, compared to 1,004 in 2016. The efficacy of the government’s previously reported victim assistance abroad—including its eight border liaison offices with Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, along with victim funds, hotlines, and government-to-government agreements to assist victims—was unclear. Some school districts compel students into forced labor in manufacturing under the guise of mandatory internships. For the third consecutive year, the government did not report identifying any trafficking victims or referring them to protective services. For the third consecutive year, the government did not report the number of victims it identified, although media reports indicated authorities continued to remove some victims from their exploitative situations. For the second consecutive year, the government did not provide data on specific law enforcement trainings, unlike in prior years. Learn the indicators of human trafficking on the TIP Office’s website or by taking a training. Some PRC national men reportedly circumvent this brokerage system by traveling to Southeast Asian capitals and entering into legal marriages with local women and girls, then return to the PRC and compel them into commercial sex. John Cotton Richmond is Ambassador at Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Traffickers have reportedly subjected PRC nationals to forced labor in the manufacturing of medical masks for the prevention of COVID-19 in South Africa. Foreign embassies in the PRC reportedly provided shelter or other protective services to victims. The PRC continued to implement a nationwide campaign initiated during the previous reporting period to investigate corrupt local officials and police officers allegedly using their influence to shield or profit from criminal organizations engaged in commercial sex rings; this included efforts to address sex trafficking. These penalties were sufficiently stringent and commensurate with the penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. However, observers noted this assistance was ad hoc and less prevalent among front-line officers working farther inland, where some foreign victims escaped, reported these abusive circumstances to the authorities, and were summarily arrested and forcibly returned to their PRC “husbands”—sometimes in exchange for bribes from the men’s families. The government reportedly continued implementing a series of pilot programs to enable Cambodian and Vietnamese citizens to enter legally into southern PRC for work in hopes of stemming illicit labor migration through especially porous sections of the border; the extent to which this mitigated trafficking vulnerabilities—or to which it was implemented—was unknown. Ukrainian police have raided a private reproductive clinic that has been allegedly “selling babies” to China. According to media and NGO reports, the North Korean government subjects North Korean citizens to forced labor in China as part of its proliferation finance system, likely with the knowledge of PRC officials; this includes forced labor in hotels, restaurants, and in remote cyber operations. • Ensure authorities do not subject trafficking victims to extended detention, punishment, or deportation. Traffickers also subject these women to forced labor in agriculture, as hostesses in nightclubs and karaoke bars, in domestic service, and at factories. The government made no efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex. Authorities claimed to have tracked and rescued more than 4,000 missing children through the use of an app-based system, including as many as 120 trafficking victims, but they did not provide any information on formal identification or referral measures for these children. Law enforcement officials detain some PRC national and foreign women on prostitution charges without due process in “custody and education” centers, where they are subjected to forced labor. PRC national traffickers also subject women and girls in other Asian countries to sex trafficking and forced labor in entertainment establishments, including PRC national-owned casinos constructed in close proximity to large-scale PRC infrastructure and investment projects, and in special economic zones with limited local government oversight. Data published by the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) indicated it prosecuted 638 cases of “women trafficking and child abduction” along with 538 cases of “forced prostitution” and 38 cases of forced labor, each involving an unknown number of total defendants, compared to at least 634 trafficking cases in 2018; 1,146 in 2017. The PRC government’s birth-limitation policy and a cultural preference for sons created a skewed sex ratio of 117 boys to 100 girls in the PRC, which observers assert continues to drive the demand for commercial sex and for foreign women as brides for PRC national men—both of which may be procured by force or coercion. Faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er agen­cies are us­ing their le­git­i­mate fronts across the world to con­duct il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing. The government also transferred thousands of these detainees, along with non-interned minority communities designated arbitrarily as “rural surplus labor,” to other areas within Xinjiang as part of a poverty alleviation program and exploited them in forced labor. • Institute and systematize proactive, formal procedures to identify trafficking victims throughout the country—including male victims, labor trafficking victims, PRC national victims returning from abroad, and victims among vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers, PRC national and foreign fishermen, foreign women, North Korean workers, and PRC national women and children arrested on “prostitution” charges—and train front-line officers on their implementation. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Photo courtesy of the Phap Luat HCMC Newspaper. While Pakistan has been downgraded to the Tier 2 watch list, China, on the other hand, has remained on the lowest Tier 3 as it made no significant efforts to eliminate trafficking. The government reportedly detained foreign seafarers in connection with illegal shipping practices senior vessel crew may have forced them to carry out. • Respecting due process, vigorously investigate, prosecute, and impose prison sentences on perpetrators of forced labor and sex trafficking, including complicit government officials. However, according to an international organization, the government continued to allocate funding to co-host capacity-building training for law enforcement and judicial officials on investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases. Without accurate data on the number of human trafficking incidents, victims, and offenders in the state, Texas cannot efficiently dedicate resources to anti-trafficking efforts. Here are 20 ideas to consider acting on in the year 2020. The PRC lacked a standardized national referral mechanism, but MPS maintained written instructions promulgated in 2016 for law enforcement officers throughout the country aiming to clarify procedures for identifying trafficking victims among individuals in commercial sex and forced or fraudulent marriage. Labor trafficking offenses could be prosecuted under Article 244, which criminalized forcing a person “to work by violence, threat, or restriction of personal freedom” and recruiting, transporting, or otherwise assisting in forcing others to labor, and prescribed three to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine. At the release of the 2020 report – the department’s 20th – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rightly called human trafficking, “a truly wicked act”. PRC national men in Africa and South America experience abuse at construction sites, in coal and copper mines, and in other extractive industries, where they face conditions indicative of forced labor, such as non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement, withholding of passports, and physical abuse. Share. Many North Korean refugees and asylum-seekers living illegally in the PRC are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Migrant Protection and Assistance: In China, IOM has undertaken various counter-trafficking activities to assist the implementation of China’s Second National Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking for the period 2013-2020. Penalties under this provision were not alone sufficiently stringent; however, Article 241 stipulated that if an individual purchased an abducted woman or child and then subjected them to “forcible sexual relations,” the individual would face additional penalties under the criminal code’s rape provisions. Some forced marriage cases, many of which continued to demonstrate corollary indicators of sex trafficking and forced labor, were mediated at the village collective-level; these proceedings rarely culminated in a guilty verdict through which victims were granted restitution. International media report local authorities force children in some government-supported work-study programs to work in factories. The police broke up a “human-trafficking” ring… This includes sex trafficking, child labor, forced labor and even forced adoptions and marriages. Article 240 prescribed penalties of five to 10 years’ imprisonment and fines for the abduction and sale of women and children. Vu Thi Dinh, a Vietnamese mother, poses with a photograph of her missing teenage daughter Dua and her best friend, at her house in Meo Vac, a mountainous border district between Vietnam’s Ha Giang province and China, on October 27, 2018. Reports indicate authorities partially staffed internment camp facilities using forced labor, including among Mandarin language instructors. These penalties were sufficiently stringent; however, the penalties prescribed for offenses involving girls 14 to 17 years of age were not commensurate with the penalties prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. The government did not provide sentencing data, but media reports indicated penalties imposed in at least two sex trafficking cases ranged from five to ten years’ imprisonment and fines to the death sentence. Some are promised jobs abroad and confined to private homes upon arrival overseas, held in conditions indicative of forced labor, and compelled to conduct telephone scams. Congolese men and boys experience conditions indicative of forced labor in PRC national-owned mining operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The law entitled victims to request criminal prosecution and claim compensation through civil lawsuits against their traffickers; the government did not report whether any victims benefited from this provision. In others, victims are lied to, assaulted, threatened or manipulated into working under inhumane, illegal or otherwise unacceptable conditions. Traffickers lure, drug, detain, or kidnap some North Korean women upon their arrival in the PRC and compel them into commercial sex in brothels and bars, through internet sex sites, or in relation to forced marriage. PRC national traffickers subject women and children from neighboring Asian countries, African countries, and countries in the Americas to forced labor and sex trafficking within the PRC. The message was simple: raise awareness for human trafficking, and it worked. Traffickers also subject undocumented PRC national seafarers to forced labor on board fishing vessels in Taiwan’s Distant Water Fleet. In prior years, the government reported maintaining at least 10 shelters specifically dedicated to care for PRC trafficking victims, as well as eight shelters for foreign trafficking victims and more than 2,300 multi-purpose shelters nationwide that could accommodate trafficking victims; it did not provide information on these shelters in 2019. September 16, 2020. Article 358 criminalized forced prostitution and prescribed penalties of five to 10 years’ imprisonment; if the offense involved a child under the age of 14, the penalties increased to 10 years’ to life imprisonment in addition to fines or confiscation of property. Access to specialized care depended heavily on victims’ location and gender; experts noted ad hoc referral procedures and an acute lack of protection services in the south, and male victims were far less likely to receive care nationwide. The government’s forced urban resettlement programs reportedly require Tibetans to bear a large portion of resettlement costs, placing many of them in debt and consequently at higher risk of forced labor. Many detained individuals approved to “graduate” from these facilities were sent to external manufacturing sites in close proximity to the camps or in other provinces and subjected to forced labor, while others were transferred and potentially subjected to forced labor within a separate formal prison system. African and Asian men reportedly experience conditions indicative of forced labor aboard Chinese-flagged fishing vessels operating in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans; men from other regions may be in forced labor aboard these vessels as well. Based on court data and media reports, authorities did not identify any male victims during the reporting period. Abolish the arbitrary detention and forced labor of persons in internment camps and affiliated manufacturing sites in Xinjiang and other provinces and immediately release and pay restitution to the individuals detained therein. The human trafficking at the source of the nation’s production capacity, however, often remains unknown outside the country. MPS officials reportedly maintained a procedure to screen for trafficking indicators among individuals arrested for alleged prostitution. Human Trafficking Statistics by State 2020. Three will face court for al­leged bride traf­fick­ing 2017-04-24 - Kim Sarom . Authorities also reportedly subject some Buddhist clerics to political indoctrination activities and forced labor in monasteries repurposed as factories. Xinjiang: Chairs Seek Additional Information about World Bank Loan for “Vocational Education" August 12, 2020. 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