Ivanka Trump joins major State Department report condemning China, other countries for trafficking people
Ivanka Trump led U. S. condemnation Tuesday of China and several other countries for failing to fight the scourge of international human trafficking, the 21st century version of slavery, marking a shift for a White House sometimes accused of indifference to human rights.
In the State Department’s annual report on a problem said to enslave 20 million people worldwide, China was downgraded to the third and worst category of offenders.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters that Chinese companies use tens of thousands of North Koreans who are forced into labor and rarely paid. Their salaries instead go to the North Korean government, he said.
China “has not taken serious steps to end its own complicity in trafficking, ” Tillerson said. He called on U. S. companies to ensure their Chinese suppliers don’ t employ forced labor.
It marks the first time the Trump administration has publicly rebuked China’s human rights record. Except for criticism of Cuba, it is a rare instance when the administration has highlighted a global human rights abuse at all.
President Trump has not publicly raised human rights as a U. S. concern in his meetings or phone calls with a series of friendly autocrats — including the leaders of Egypt, Turkey and the Philippines — who have jailed opponents, muzzled the press or curbed civil liberties.
But Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, has expressed deep concerns about human trafficking, in which men, women and children are traded and sold as workers or sex slaves, and Tuesday’s report was released with considerable pomp.
She joined Tillerson for an elaborate ceremony in the ornate Benjamin Franklin Hall of the State Department. Several hundred people applauded as seven on stage were honored for their work fighting the illegal practice.
No one mentioned that parts of Ivanka Trump’s clothing line are produced in China.
