And these are just the more obvious roles that vulnerable individuals get trafficked into. There are many, many more behind closed doors.
The Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO), which helps victims of trafficking and provides resources to fight against it, recently released a report on the issue to highlight case studies and educate the public.
There are a number of indicators that can be looked out for in order to identify a victim of human trafficking. According to the International Labour Office (ILO), the presence of at least one of these indicators points towards the possibility of a forced labour situation.
The indicators include abuse of vulnerability; deception; restriction of movement; isolation; physical and sexual violence; intimidation and threats; retention of identity documents; withholding of wages; debt bondage; abusive working and living conditions; and excessive overtime.
With an estimated 250,000 documented and 100,000 undocumented migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Malaysia, there is no way that none of them are trafficked. Many MDWs become prisoners to debt bondage, where agents or employers lure workers by paying for them to relocate to Malaysia, and then deduct “recruitment fees” from their future salaries.
“This practice incentivises abuses by employers, who may change the initial terms of the employment agreement – including wages, job duties to be performed, etc – and hold the worker hostage until the fees are recouped,” WAO said.
Stories of physical and mental abuse towards domestic workers are also disturbingly common in Malaysia, and some even result in death. In March this year, a 42-year-old housewife in Penang was charged with the murder of her Indonesian maid, and with causing grievous hurt to her second maid, a Cambodian woman. Chan Lay Lee was not allowed bail and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and whipping.
Other types of abuse many MDWs are subjected to include beatings, verbal abuse, food deprivation, scalding with hot water as punishment, and sexual assault.
There are very real fears that hold these victims back from reporting their employers to the authorities. Some are afraid of losing their jobs or have been scared into submission with threats, and others who pluck up the courage to make police reports often find themselves threatened by the police to return to their employers or agencies. Protection is a rare privilege offered by the police, but this shouldn’t be the case.
As a community, we need to learn how to recognise the signs of someone who has been trafficked, and how to take action to help. Observing a person’s behaviour is an important indicator, especially if you are not privy to their place of work. Signs of fear, anxiety, depression, submissiveness, nerves and paranoia point towards something out of place, as well as nervous reactions when the topic of law enforcement is brought up.
A trafficked person is also highly likely to have poor health and appear malnourished, and also show signs of physical abuse like bruises. Such individuals probably have very few personal possessions and are not in control of the money they earn or their identification records.
WAO said the public must be “vigilant in identifying and assisting trafficking survivors – if you suspect someone is a trafficking survivor or being subjected to forced labour, encourage them to get help from the police or from an NGO like WAO”.
If human trafficking is to be stopped, we, the people who are free to work wherever we like and spend our money as we like, must take up the responsibility to look out for those who can’t.