US State Department’s annual report on human trafficking and forced labour puts China in same tier as North Korea and Syria
The United States downgraded China in its annual report on human trafficking and forced labour, putting the country in the same tier as North Korea and Syria and thus risking a diplomatic backlash from Beijing. Using information from human rights organisations and media, the US State Department’s 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report cited forcible repatriation of North Koreans without screening for indications that they had been trafficking victims and coercion of Uygurs by local officials into forced labour. These and other citations, including government complicity in trafficking and arrests of women and children caught up in trafficking for prostitution, put China in “Tier 3”, the lowest of the report’s four categories of violators. The others are Tier 1, Tier 2 and “Tier 2 Watch List”. “Some unverified media and NGO reports indicated government complicity in forced labour continued, including in some drug rehabilitation facilities where individuals continued to be detained without judicial process, ” the report said. In its assessment of other countries, the report also cited frequent cases of Chinese nationals working against their will in massage parlours and construction sites. The change in the US government’s estimation of China’s efforts to stop human trafficking came amid a warming in relations between Washington and Beijing. Following a successful summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in April, the two governments started a series of high-level dialogues aimed at balancing trade and investment flows and reining in North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme. Last month, China voted with the US and all other UN Security Council members to expand sanctions against Pyongyang in retaliation for its recent ballistic missile tests by blacklisting more North Korean companies and individuals. Tier 3 countries in the State Department reports are subject to restrictions including a ban on funding for government official or employee participation in educational and cultural exchange programmes for certain countries, all applied at the US president’s discretion.
