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Venezuela Dropped From U.S. Human-Trafficking List
By Edward DeMarco
Bloomberg
June 4, 2008

Venezuela was removed from the U.S. list of worst offenders in human trafficking for improving its law enforcement efforts, while two Asia-Pacific nations were added for tolerating the sex trade in women and children.

The Venezuelan government is making ``significant efforts'' to meet minimum standards for eliminating child prostitution and forced labor, the State Department said in its annual ``Trafficking in Persons Report'' issued today in Washington.

Fiji and Papua New Guinea were added to the ``Tier 3'' list of countries that the State Department accused of doing little or nothing to combat the abuses. It is the lowest rating in the assessment and might lead to the loss of some American aid.

While Venezuela was moved to a watch list of 40 nations the U.S. judges to be falling short of cracking down on traffickers, the improved rating marked unusual praise. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often is accused by the U.S. of undermining democracy and supporting guerrillas in Colombia, an American ally.

Venezuela had been put in Tier 3 for the past four years.

``These are unilateral lists that show moral double standards,'' Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez said today. ``We don't need to be certified by the U.S. for anything.''

The Latin American nation improved its standing by passing a law to protect girls and women from sexual exploitation, forced labor and slavery, and by opening two criminal probes against trafficking suspects in Caracas, according to the report.

$500 Million

The U.S. has spent more than $500 million in the past seven fiscal years to fight human trafficking worldwide, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in presenting the report today. This year's report includes results of a review of prosecution data for the first time, she said.

``Although more countries are addressing sex trafficking through prosecution and convictions, the petty tyrants who exploit their laborers rarely receive serious punishment,'' Rice told reporters in Washington. ``We see this as a serious shortcoming.''

In one case, a young woman from Burma named Aye Aye Wynn had been recruited to work in shrimp processing in a neighboring country with 800 other Burmese men, women and children, said Mark Lagon, director of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

Hunted, Beaten

When she and two others tried to escape, they were hunted down, beaten and chained to poles in a courtyard, and her hair was shaved for humiliation, said Lagon, who met her last year.

``Thankfully, Aye Aye was rescued'' in a police raid, he said. ``Around the world, gross examples of forced labor are commonly treated as mere administrative matters or regulatory offenses rather than despicable crimes.''

The State Department said boys and girls in Fiji, a group of islands in the South Pacific, ``are victims of commercial sexual exploitation by Fiji citizens, foreign tourists and sailors on foreign fishing vessels.''

Authorities in Papua New Guinea are doing nothing to stop women and children from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and China from being brought in to work in brothels in the capital, Port Moresby, and at remote mining and logging camps, according to the U.S. report. Political turmoil in the country, located north of Australia, is contributing to the enforcement problem, it said.

Moldova Trafficking

Moldova, which borders Ukraine and Romania, also was added to the worst-offenders list for the trafficking of women to other European nations and to the Middle East, the report said. The U.S. accused some Moldovan government officials of complicity in the sex trade.

Officials at the Washington embassies of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Moldova didn't immediately return telephone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf; Equatorial Guinea, an oil-producing African nation; and, Malaysia and Uzbekistan were removed from Tier 3.

The State Department authors dedicated their report to Ama, a girl from an unidentified African nation they said was subjected to repeated rapes in a brothel. An attempt to rescue the girl apparently failed and her whereabouts are unknown, the authors said in a closing note.

``Ama's brief flicker of hope haunts us, for it defies all that we strive to accomplish,'' they said.

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