Authorities in the Maldives are engaged in a “blame game” over human trafficking in the country, and have been “pointing at each other and going around in circles” observed Professor Mondira Dutta, of the Central Asian Studies Programme at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
“The Maldives is on the tier two watch list in the US State Department’s trafficking in persons report. This means that there are enough policy recommendations in place to combat human trafficking, but there isn’t much evidence in the field to show the government is working towards it,” Dr Dutta said.
Dr Dutta presented a lecture on human trafficking yesterday at the invitation of the Human Rights Commission of the Maldives (HRCM), after spending a week interviewing stakeholders.
“There are cases of elderly men going to India and marrying young women, and returning [to the Maldives] with a free domestic servant,” she said. “I know of one such woman who was returned to her home country at the expense of the Indian High Commission.”
In other instances police had conducted raids on massage parlours, “but they are unable to do anything as there is no law against human trafficking in place.”
The Maldives was primarily a destination country for traffickers, she said, “with workers trafficked into forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.”
With human trafficking not expressly prohibited and the only prescribed penalty for labour trafficking a small fine, unregistered rogue employment agents were” rampant” in the country, she said.
“Immigration attests that in one case a quota for 99 workers was issued in the name of an 80 year-old disabled Maldivian man, not in his senses, who knew nothing about migrant workers being brought to the country in his name. This was sanctioned not just for one year, but year after year.”
Immigration officials told Dr Dutta that a common question asked by many workers arriving in the country was “Is this Malaysia?”
“They do not know the agent’s number or even his name. You cannot blame this on them,” she said. “They are told they have work in a resort, but it turns out to be a small restaurant in Male’.”
Whenever fraudulent agents were arrested, the maximum sentences handed out were no more than three months in prison, “and then it’s back to business again.”
Even the Ministry of Education was retaining the passports of expatriates, Dr Dutta said, “in order to ‘ease out the visa application system’, which is not something I’ve heard happen anywhere else in the world. This contributes to the conversion of legal migrants into illegal ones.”
The Tourism Ministry had acknowledged that there were “cases in resorts that were not normal”, however the Ministry claimed these were outside its jurisdiction, Dr Dutta added.
“Hospitals also attest the fact that low numbers of expatriates [attend hospital] because they have no money to pay, so they are left to the mercy of God.”
Even the number of migrant workers in the country was unknown, Dr Dutta said, with the only estimates based on data from 2008. According to that information, 85,000 foreign workers were in the Maldives, approximately 28,000 Indians with the majority Bangladeshis.
“More that 50 percent of workers are illegal – why?” she asked. “Because they are paid irregular salaries, go without pay for months, work extremely hard for long hours in inhuman living conditions and face constant insecurity. The majority are illiterate and the poorest of the poor from the developing world.”
False promises of “rosy scenarios” overseas compelled many to seek a better life in countries such as the Maldives, Dr Dutta said, but placed them at high risk of exploitation by unscrupulous employment agents in countries where the authorities were disinterested or laws and regulations protecting workers did not exist.
“Law enforcement machinery for trafficking does not exist – there are no laws for human trafficking in Maldives, and existing laws can even be a hurdle for booking culprits,” Dr Dutta said, using the example of a trafficked sex worker who local laws viewed as a criminal rather than a victim.
Trafficking – “trade in flesh” – was one of the “world’s most heinous crimes” and “a modern-day slave trade,” Dr Dutta said.
“We used to living in a society that accepts the barbaric treatment of men, women and children, that this starts to become accepted. The initial shock of these outlandish crimes wears off quickly in an environment where rape, murder and humiliation are not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment,” she added.
HRCM is currently working on a report on human trafficking in the Maldives.
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