Hong Kong ‘in denial’ about human trafficking problem, British lawmaker says
Ian McColl, who proposed Britain’s latest anti-slavery law, says city needs to consolidate related offences under single piece of legislation
The leading British lawmaker behind his country’s latest anti-slavery law said on Friday that Hong Kong was “in denial” about its human trafficking problem and that a single, dedicated piece of legislation would be a good start to curbing exploitation.
Ian McColl, a member of the House of Lords, was addressing remarks by the city’s No 2 official, Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, who had argued that separate laws already in place “provided an adequate and solid legal framework”.
Hong Kong laws provide a narrow definition of human trafficking, including only trafficking for the purpose of prostitution. Forced labour is not covered, and illegal employment is a separate offence.
The local government does not compile figures on human trafficking other than exploitation of foreign domestic workers, over which authorities opened 16 and 20 cases in 2015 and 2016 respectively. But in a 2016 report the Global Slavery Index estimated there were more than 29,500 victims in the city.
“Hong Kong is the same as other countries. At first they all deny it, and that’s the problem,” McColl said, in reference to the city being placed on the Tier 2 watch list by the US State Department in its 2017 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, just one rank short of attracting sanctions.
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In Britain, McColl was behind a bill to consolidate various offences related to human trafficking and to push businesses to disclose the use of slavery in their purchased raw materials. The bill was adopted by then home secretary Theresa May in 2015 and passed as the Modern Slavery Act the same year.