Malaysia rejects US human trafficking blacklist

Malaysia has dismissed as one-sided a U.S. report saying the Malaysian government is not doing enough to fight human trafficking, newspapers reported Thursday.

The Star and the New Straits Times quoted Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar as saying the U.S. State Department's report failed to consider the country's efforts to protect foreign workers.

"I don't know how they can come up with that report. We can't react to something that does not take into account what we are doing. It is unfortunate that they pass judgment on us," The Star quoted Syed Hamid as saying.

"No single country can act as the investigator, prosecutor and judge against another," Syed Hamid said in the report.

A ministry spokeswoman reached by phone said she could not confirm the comments. Calls to request an interview with Syed Hamid were not immediately answered.

In its annual "Trafficking in Persons Report," the U.S. State Department downgraded Malaysia from a watch list to the blacklist "for its failure to show satisfactory progress in combating trafficking in persons."

The report cited the Malaysian government's failure to prosecute and punish traffickers, to provide adequate shelters and services to victims and to protect its migrant workers from involuntary servitude.

Fifteen other countries were included on the blacklist, which makes them subject to sanctions.

Tenaganita, a local nonprofit organization, agreed that Malaysia did not adequately protect foreign migrants and domestic workers, upon which the country relies heavily for menial work.

"In reality we really haven't done very much. We still have a very far way to go," said Aegile Fernandez, coordinator of Tenaganita's program to combat human trafficking.

"We don't have a good, open, transparent foreign workers bill," she said.

Malaysia tabled a bill to fight human trafficking — the country's first on the issue — in its parliament in April. The legislature's approval of the bill is considered a formality.

The government has said the bill will make it easier for police, immigration departments and other authorities to pursue, prosecute and convict alleged human traffickers.