Speeches
Remarks by Ambassador Luis CdeBaca at a Press Conference at the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh
U.S. Embassy, Phnom Penh
September 9, 2009
Good afternoon and thank you all for joining us this afternoon. I am pleased to have been able to visit Cambodia on my first trip to Asia in my capacity as the Ambassador at large to monitor and combat human trafficking. And I would like to thank the Government of Cambodia and our Ambassador, Ambassador Rodley has been very welcoming and very supportive of the efforts to enforce the laws against human trafficking, the laws against modern slavery here in Cambodia as well in furtherance of the United States’ efforts around the world. As many of you may know the issue of human trafficking for the United States Government, the President, President Obama, raised this in his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament earlier this summer and as a result we see this as an important part of our democracy building around the world.
One of the things that we are attempting to do in keeping with the promise of the Secretary of State that our approach to human trafficking would be one of partnerships, of working with our colleagues around the world is to be able to meet not as an outside force critiquing and criticizing, but rather to be able to meet with our colleagues here in the Government of Cambodia, in the Ministries of the Interior, Social Affairs and Justice, as well as with many of the non-governmental organizations who are doing such important work here to combat human trafficking. And I would like to commend the Cambodian Government for its act of partnership in recent months, especially as it has the inter-ministerial working group, where they have actually brought in the non-governmental organizations to work on such important issues as victim identification and care. We understand that the Minister of Social Affairs this week has signed into use the national minimum standards for the protection of victims of human trafficking and that as a result of that partnership with the Government and non-governmental organizations, we commend the Government for that step forward by protecting victim’s rights, we not only are able to work towards a human rights outcome but also we’ll be able to put the traffickers out of business and in prison where they belong.
As I am sure you are aware close cooperation between the United States and the Cambodian officials this week resulted in the arrest and removal of three American child sex tourists just a few days ago and this would not have been possible without the partnership of United States and Cambodian authorities. My counterparts from the immigration service were able to be in Los Angeles when those men arrived back in the United States to face justice in the American courts. And we would hope, and we have raised in our meetings with the Cambodian Government over the last two days the notion that another party to that crime remains here in Cambodia, and that would be the brothel owners who were selling the children to these pedophiles, one of which was reported an 11 year old, who was sold to one of these men from one of the brothel owners. And so we would hope that the anti-trafficking statutes from 2008 could be used by the government to investigate and prosecute those persons who had provided the victims to the foreign pedophiles. One of the things that we are looking at around the world and here in Cambodia as well is the effect of the global economic crisis on Human Trafficking. And this is something that as families are under strain, as there are fewer opportunities to borrow money or to earn money, people end up in more vulnerable situations. And I think that that’s something very important to think about, not just the cases that everyone is familiar with, of the women, of the girls, and the brothels, but also those Cambodians who may, because they feel they have no other options, travel to surrounding countries, whether it Malaysia or Thailand for instance, and be trapped in a world of exploitation. Specifically we’ve seen problems with domestic workers and in the fishing fleets with Cambodian citizens. And so one of the things that I’ve raised on my trip in these other countries as well, in Malaysia and Thailand was the responsibility of those governments to make sure that Cambodian citizens who are enslaved abroad are actually identified and helped and then we would hope that those people would be assisted by the government upon their return home. So we certainly encourage the government to continue those efforts and to work with us in partnership to address this problem. One of the things that we’ve seen in the United States is that it takes vigilance to make sure that modern day slavery does not raise its ugly head. It takes vigilance to make sure that the very law enforcement agents who are supposed to be helping the victims are not in fact participating with the traffickers through corruption. And we have prosecuted several of our police officers in the United States for helping the traffickers in cases in America. And we would certainly hope that the government here in Cambodia could also look at issues of official complicity and understand and work towards a system in which the police officers and the detectives are not part of the problem, but are part of the solution. And we will work with our counterparts to continue that dialogue around the issues of human trafficking and official corruption. Finally to echo what Secretary Hillary Clinton said early this year when the trafficking report was released, we are extending our hand around the world, not just to work on the core issues of prevention, prosecution, and protection, but also a fourth, which is partnerships. We look to a partnership with the Royal Government to uncover more of these criminals to bring them to justice, whether here or in the United States and to support the non-governmental organizations and others who are working with these victims. And I think with that we have a little time for questions.
Questions and Answers
Q. (South East Asia Weekly) I have one question, you know how hard is the situation in the Human Trafficking during the global economic crisis? Thanks.
A. One of the things that we’ve seen with the global economic crisis is that it is displacing workers around the world. And for instance in Europe we see workers from Eastern Europe, who were, who had gone to the wealthier nations, they’ve lost their jobs and so now they are starting to work in the underground economy and we’re afraid that they are more easily taken advantage of. A United Nations study here in Cambodia recently demonstrated that women in the brothels are taking on greater debts to their “bosses” instead of borrowing from money laundering, um excuse me, a money lender back in their village, or borrowing money from family or things like that. Instead women are more likely to owe debts to the brothel owners, and in that situation it makes them that much more vulnerable to debt bondage and exploitation. And so we’ve seen this notion of the global economic crisis making people more vulnerable to the traffickers and were starting to see the cases that result from that as well.
Q. (Could not understand the questions asked)
A. We haven’t seen, the data doesn’t yet reflect the increase and I think that part of that is that the data is very imprecise about human trafficking. It’s very hard to get a global number as to how many people are enslaved. There are estimates; there are actually some very solid estimates by the international labor organization of up to 12.3 million people world wide. If one factors in certain forms of debt bondage, especially in India, then you get as high as 20 million in the estimates. But those estimates are not year by year. So it’s hard for us to be able to, while we hear the antic dotes and we’ve even seen research in particular areas such as the study of debt bondage with Cambodian people in prostitution, we don’t have; we can’t say that there’s two million more slaves this year than there were last year. We have seen more and more exploitation, and we’ve seen that in many countries it’s the foreign guest workers who loose their jobs first. They aren’t necessarily all going home though so were afraid that there following into the underground economy in those countries.
Q. (Cambodian Television Network [CTN] ) My question to you, is your official visit here, pave the way for the official visit for Cambodian Foreign Minister, Hor Namhong to Washington D.C., and what it is exactly scheduled and if your State Department would discuss with counterpart about human (deficit?) in Cambodian besides the National Agenda?
A. Well I think the agenda for the meeting itself is in development, but we raise the issue of human trafficking at the higher levels. It’s something that Secretary Clinton raises when she meets with her counterparts, and I think that it’s something that we certainly will continue to have a dialogue with the Ministry of, not only Foreign Affairs, but also the Ministries of Interior, Justice, and Social Welfare.
Q. (Could not understand the follow up question asked by the same reporter)
A. I can’t confirm what the exact agenda would be for that visit.
Q. (Reouters) So you just say that the party return with three American arrests return to Los Angeles yesterday and the brothel owner who provided the 11 years old, you know, to one of the men still remain in Cambodia so from your point of view you are urging Cambodian Government authority to arrest the owner of brothel who provide the 11 years old one of three men to face justice, right?
A. That’s correct, we think that not only must the clients who abuse children in this way be brought to justice, but the traffickers who provide them need to be brought to justice. And the United States in cooperation and collaboration with the Government was able to bring those clients back to the United States but again, we would hope that the government of Cambodia can work with us to complete the case by looking at the actual human trafficker involved.
Q. (Same reporter) So your concerned regarding about the global downturn that could contribute to the increase of the, you know, human trafficking, exploitation, etc. Specifically in terms of, you know really Cambodian context, do you see this trend has been deteriorated since the global downturn hit late last year?
A. Well as I mentioned there, the first data that we’ve seen on that with any specificity in Cambodia is a report that was done by a UN project called UNIAP, and that it’s a research arm of the United Nations, U N I A P, and through there research, where they had been doing research before the global financial crisis, they are actually able to now compare from talking to a number of women who were working in brothels here in Cambodia, and one of the things that they’ve found was that the women are much more vulnerable and more dependant because they now owe debts to the brothel owners that they didn’t owe before. And so we look at that as a measure of how much debt bondage would happen within that circumstance. And debt bondage, under the United Nations definitions, is a form of human trafficking. So trafficking isn’t just, you know, being taken by a recruiter down to Malaysia to work or something like that, trafficking can actually be in a situation where the person is trapped and cannot leave where they work. So this UN research about the global financial crisis does indicate that there is a correlation between the global financial crisis and the debt bondage that a number of these workers are undergoing.
Q. (Same Reuters Reporter) I would like to have another question if I could, from the countries you visited, from Malaysia to Thailand, in South Asia, where is Cambodia? Do you see Cambodia as one of t he most serious cases in terms of human trafficking, exploitation, in comparison with other countries in asia?
A. It’s interesting because each country that I’ve been to has a very specific anti trafficking problem, but in many ways their trafficking problems are interconnected. So we see, for instance in Thailand, a number of instances of human trafficking in which the victims are from Cambodia often because they’re there illegally. And so there afraid to ever report any abuse, so the employers abuse them. In Malaysia, we see many Cambodian men especially; being held in slavery on these boats, and again a United Nations report indicated I think that over 50% of the men that they had interviewed upon their return had seen a murder of another worker on those fishing boats. And so the level of abuse and slavery in the fishing fleet is something that’s of great concern to us, but again those are Cambodian’s who are enslaved in Malaysia. So too then you have the problems here in Cambodian, often in the sex industry. Each of the countries that I’ve been to I could give you a similar analysis of what their problem is. I think that things that stand out for me as far as Cambodia after meeting with the Government over the last few days is their engagement especially in the last few months on the issue has been very productive. We see a recognition that victim care is very important. We see recognition that there needs to be involvement from both the police, and the prosecutors, and the judges. Those are very heartening realizations and we applaud the government for the action that they’ve taken so far. And we hope that will then translate into a heightened number of prosecutions and that traffickers actually then are convicted and victims are actually helped.
Q. (Can’t hear the question as its being asked)
A. It’s interesting because in our conversations with the government themselves, as well as with the non-governmental sector, we here the refrain that there has been a very positive engagement among the different government agencies and between the government and the NGO’s just in the last few months. And so, I think that it’s something that we see, an energy that we see, that we will want to consider to partner with the Cambodian Government. And as a result of that energy, we hoped that we would be able to see that increased number of people helped and defendant’s prosecution.
Q. (Phnom Penh Post) I wanted to ask you about the State Department Anti-trafficking country ratings. I know that in June the State Department had downgraded Cambodia from Tier 2, to a Tier 2 watch list, and you’ve been, just in this conference here, praising Cambodians, the Governments action on this point, so I’m wondering if anything you’ve seen on this trip has led you to believe you might upgrade Cambodia to Tier 2, or even Tier 1 in the near future, and if not what are the most specific things the government could do to upgrade their rating?
A. Well the report time period is, you know basically from say March to March, or April to April. And so this last years report was based on the activities of the Cambodian Government during that time period, so largely in 2008. As were looking at 2009, as I’ve said earlier, were heartened by a number of the steps that have been taken, some of those are steps that were suggested by the United States in the recommendations, excuse me, in the country reports from that report. We don’t think that its, were not saying that the government of Cambodia has convened an inter-ministerial task force, worked on victim care, etcetera simply because the United States identified that as a diagnostic in our report. Rather we get the sense that the government is taking steps to implement the 2008 trafficking law, and we find that to be very salutatory. I can’t really give you a preview as to what happens next year, you know at the end of the year we tend to have to look at everything that happens. And you know if at some point we don’t just look at working groups, we don’t just look at reports or directives, we look at results on the ground. Again it comes down to how are victims being treated, and are defendants being prosecuted. And so that’s something that we will hope to see when we look at the situation here in Cambodia next spring.
Q. (cannot hear the follow up question from the same reporter)
A. One of the things that we’ve raised in our reports, excuse me in our meetings this week, and one of the things raised in the TIP report this spring, was the fact that the 2008 law as currently written has resulted in confusion. And we’ve seen I think a good understanding of that, on the part of, not just the NGO’s who we’ve met with, but also government. But the government themselves are recognizing that there is room for improvement in that particular law. I think that the definitional priority is very important when one is dealing with human trafficking. One needs to know the difference between human trafficking, on the one hand, and other things that are closely related, such as alien smuggling or non coerced prostitution. And so we’ve talked with the government of Cambodia. Based on my experiences as federal prosecutor doing these cases, and based on the U.S. experiences wrestling with our own trafficking problem as to ways in which the 2008 law could be improved, we think that the confusion that came from the 2008 law was certainly unfortunate, but with energy and political will, that confusion should be able to be overcome.
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And I also want to make sure, because we just usually email the Ambassadors with the annual tip report, so I brought a hard copy to present to the Embassy, and I want to do that now. Thank you.
