“Prosecution wise, the penalties for trafficking drugs are harsher than that of trafficking humans. It’s easier, there’s less risk and more profit. And that’s where the issue is,” said Don Lord, executive director of anti-trafficking organisation, HAGAR International. He said drug traffickers have now switched to human trafficking because of the vagueness of laws concerning the crime. University of Otago lecturer and researcher of human trafficking, Jen Desrosiers, agreed: “It’s more convenient,” she said. “Drugs can be used once, humans can be used again and again.”
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) describes human trafficking as modern-day slavery. “It involves forced exploitation,” their website reads. “It takes many different forms, but the most common would be forced prostitution and forced labour.” Victims are generally deceived into believing they are going to be living and working legitimately in a country. Once they arrive, they are forced to work long hours to repay their “debt”, the sum of which they often don’t know. “These victims are seen as commodities,” says INZ, “they are a means of income for their traffickers.” They lose their passports, money and return tickets home. Worst of all, they lose their freedom. In some cases, they eventually lose their life.
Every year, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime releases the Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. In 2011, it reported that 53 percent of discovered trafficking victims were used for sexual exploitation. Of these, 97 percent were women. The second most common use of trafficking victims, at 40 percent, was for forced labour. A total of 0.3 percent were used for organ removal, and seven percent were used for other exploitative purposes.
In 2013, a total of 20.9 million victims of human trafficking were recorded across the globe. Note that these are only the victims who were found; it is difficult to put a number on something that often occurs under the radar. Victims generally tend to be from South East Asian countries (such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Nepal), India and Africa. Desrosiers said New Zealand is seen as a destination, rather than a source, for human trafficking.
Desrosiers said “the border control in New Zealand is very good”. However, Thomas Harre, who is on the legal team for Slave Free Seas (SFS) and is a founding member of the New Zealand Network Against People Trafficking (NZNAPT), said victims are generally brought in legally, often on tourist or temporary working visas. “The papers are in order, they look legitimate, and it’s only after they get here that the exploitation really begins,” said Harre. He noted this is extremely common for the sex industry due to prostitution being legalised. “Women are often brought in on tourist visas and locked in a brothel or locked in a house and forced to work in the sex industry. This is often against their will,” said Harre.
Steph Lambert, head of advocacy and capacity building at Stand Against Slavery (SAS), recently wrote a “Lawtalk” article for the New Zealand Law Society about trafficking in New Zealand. Lambert spoke of a case in 2001 in which a Thai woman claimed she had been trafficked into New Zealand and forced into prostitution. The woman had been promised a job in a restaurant so long as she repaid NZ$10,000 at 36 percent interest. Once she arrived in New Zealand, her passport, money and return tickets to Thailand were taken. She paid $150 each week to live in a small room with six other women, and worked 16-hour days to pay back her “debt”. After she came forward to authorities, the woman was sent back to Thailand and no charges were laid.
Foreign charter vessels in New Zealand waters are also becoming a key concern for anti-trafficking organisations. Harre says allegations of trafficked people working on these vessels have been emerging since 2004. Despite the work of SFS, little has been done by the New Zealand authorities. Harre spoke of a case in 2011 where Indonesian men were trafficked from their home country to illegally work on foreign fishing vessels in Christchurch waters. The men were promised jobs working on fishing boats in New Zealand. Harre said they were made to sign contracts in languages they didn’t understand, and were kept at sea and made to work up to 16-hour days. The men were beaten and, in some cases, sexually assaulted. “At the end of it,” said Harre, “they weren’t paid.”
The case was included in the US State Department Trafficking in Persons report for 2013. The report said the men were “subjected to forced labor, including through debt bondage, confiscated passports, underpayment of wages, imposition of significant debts, poor living and working conditions and physical and sexual abuse”.
Although the case ticked all the boxes for both international trafficking law and New Zealand’s domestic trafficking laws, no justice was ever brought to the perpetrators. “The police and INZ never prosecuted anyone,” said Harre. “They took the view that it was an employment matter, and not a criminal matter. If you take a step back, you can see that this is blatant trafficking, but everyone turned a blind eye.”
Similar allegations have been made about Asian and Pacific Island people working in New Zealand’s agriculture, horticulture, viticulture and hospitality industries. The Trafficking in Persons report found that these individuals migrate to New Zealand to work and are instead “subjected to forced labor”. The report said that the workers were charged large recruitment fees, had unjustified salary deductions and their movement was restricted. Passports were confiscated and contracts were altered to suit the employer. “They do not complain,” it read, “because they are afraid of losing their temporary work visas.”
The Christchurch rebuild has become a prominent destination for workers trafficked from foreign countries. In July 2014, current affairs show Third Degree reported that the New Zealand government had begun fast-tracking visa applications from Filipino labourers to work on the rebuild. Stories began emerging about oppressive contracts, job losses and working without pay. The workers were forced to live, and cook, in tiny rooms that slept three to four people. For these rooms, workers were paying over $400 a week in rent.
The workers pay over $10,000 to recruitment organisations in the Philippines, so a large debt is accumulated before they even enter New Zealand. “Once they arrive, they’re forced to work in these inhumane conditions and take very little money away from it,” said Lord. “It’s blatant trafficking right here in one of New Zealand’s largest cities.” Workers were made to sign a contract that included their “debt bondage”. They were required to pay $7700 for their toolbox; if they left the company before the end of their three-year term, they would be liable for US$10,000. In most cases, their passports were confiscated.
Aged care is also becoming a target for trafficked migrants in New Zealand. Harre said people from foreign countries are brought in to work in rest homes as nurses. “They’re not qualified as nurses, they’re only qualified in aged care,” he said. They are then stuck working long hours at minimum wage, and living in shared housing. At the same time, they are re-paying the fee they were charged to come to New Zealand, along with interest. The Salvation Army holds a Prevent People Trafficking conference each year. In 2014, it reported that over half of the overseas visas given for nursing or aged care were for Filipinos. The majority of these were women.
In 2014, two men were charged under the New Zealand Crimes Act 1961 with people trafficking. According to INZ, the men arranged by deception the entry of 18 Indian nationals into New Zealand. A third man was also charged for making false refugee claims for the Indians once they arrived in the country. This case is significant for New Zealand; they are the first charges ever made for people trafficking.
Of the charges, INZ’s Assistant General Manager of Compliance and Border Operations Peter Devoy said the prosecution was an extremely significant development. “It shows how seriously we treat such allegations, and the fact that this is the first prosecution for people trafficking in New Zealand sends a very strong message that we will thoroughly investigate any other cases,” said Devoy.
These charges should be cause for celebration. But why has it taken so long? New Zealand has been a destination country for people trafficking for over a decade. The trafficking industry, which was estimated at $32 billion in 2013, occurs right under our noses.
Harre said the starting point for human trafficking prevention is the United Nations Trafficking Protocol. The protocol “recognises that states need to criminalise what they call human trafficking”. “What it really is,” said Harre, “is using domestic criminal law to enforce international law.” The protocol says there are three elements of human trafficking: an act, a means and a purpose. Acts are things like transportation, harbouring, recruitment and general movement of the victims. The means are things like deception, coercion and abuse of a position of vulnerability. The purpose is essentially exploitation. This can be sexual (such as forced prostitution), forced labour or organ harvesting. Harre said, “On the basis of those UN elements, states who have signed up to the protocol need to, in their own domestic legislation, pass an act that criminalises those sorts of things.”
New Zealand signed the UN protocol in 2000 and ratified it in 2002. Since signing, New Zealand has included human trafficking in section 98(D) of the Crimes Act 1961. In the act, trafficking is defined as the use, coercion or deception to arrange or attempt to arrange the entry of a person into New Zealand or another state. The penalty is a fine of up to $500,000, up to 20 years in prison, or both.
Although the act exists, it has been criticised for having severe gaps — gaps that allow the crime to be committed on the scale that it is. Harre says this legislation overlaps with international law, “but not entirely”. New Zealand law recognises the need for an act, and a means, but does not require a purpose. “It’s a more limited approach than what the international law says,” said Harre.
In 2013, the Trafficking in Persons report found that New Zealand does not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking law that prohibits all forms of trafficking. The report argues that the Crimes Act of 1961 “criminalises only some specific forms of forced labor”. Slavery is criminalised, but “is limited to situations of debt bondage and serfdom”. The prohibition “does not cover forced labor obtained by means other than debt, law, custom, or agreement that prohibits a person from leaving employment”. The report recommended that New Zealand expand the legal framework currently in place around human trafficking “to prohibit and punish all forms of human trafficking”. It also recommended that New Zealand “increase efforts to investigate and prosecute both sex and labor trafficking offences” and fully implement a national plan of action to address current trafficking trends.
A year after the report was written, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment implemented a Plan of Action Against People Trafficking. The three goals of the plan were prevention, protection and prosecution. Prevention involved training government officials, New Zealand police and the Department of Labour on anti-trafficking measures. Prevention also involved wider research on human trafficking, targeted awareness raising, intelligence gathering, international engagement with trafficking issues, and increased border security. Protection involved assisting victims, including with housing, social services and financial assistance. The plan also made it a goal to protect the physical safety of victims. The prosecution aspect aimed to have stronger investigations of suspected trafficking activity, support for victims in the criminal process and also compensation for victims once they are freed.
In 2013, New Zealand was ranked as the most free country in the world. Yet, in the last decade, we have failed those suffering the most. It can no longer be argued that trafficking does not occur here, and we need to begin to do something about it. If the plan of action is lived up to, victims of human trafficking will have a chance that they never had before to be freed from those with total control of their lives. A plan is easy to put in place, but, in order to prove it is working, we need to see some charges being laid. Actions speak louder than words. These actions are long overdue.
