Lao police say they encounter constant difficulties in cracking down on human traffickers who take people from Laos into neighbouring countries because such criminals are usually experienced enough to evade capture.
The deputy head of the anti-human trafficking unit of the Ministry of Public Security, Police Captain Phetsamone Vongpadith, said last week that human traffickers usually exploited the poverty-stricken situations of their victims, which enabled them to act without using any force.
“They use different methods from in the past. Human trafficking is no longer a matter of capturing people like animals and putting them up for sale,” he told Vientiane Times during a training course on human trafficking laws at the Judicial Training Centre of the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences.
“Traffickers now trick people into exploitative situations, with the promise of extra income and the opportunity to travel.”
He said that the traffickers knew that many Lao people were poor and wanted to work in more developed countries to earn more money, and considered them easy targets.
He explained that victims rarely knew what was happening to them, and so were unable to assist police officers when they were stopped at checkpoints. After that, it was often too late for a victim to seek help. He said that situations in which police were able to apprehend traffickers arose because the victims had escaped from forced labour situations and sought help from the police. In these cases, the police would have the opportunity to gather enough evidence to have the traffickers arrested, he explained.
Captain Phetsamone said that in the past few months police had arrested a man in Vientiane after a young girl, who had managed to escape from a factory in Thailand, filed a complaint in which she stated that she had been lured to work in the factory and had never received any payment.
After investigating the matter, the police took the case to the Vientiane People's Court, where the man, who had been acting as a broker for a trafficking ring in Thailand, was sentenced to 15 years in jail.
He said that the best way to address the problem of human trafficking was not only to track down the perpetrators of the crime, but also to encourage all sectors concerned to provide more job opportunities throughout the country so that poor people would not be forced to seek jobs in other countries.
He also said that the authorities should provide safe immigration guidelines for those who wish to work abroad, and tell them where they can seek help in case of an emergency.
According to information from the Social Welfare Department of the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, from 2001-2006 around 730 victims of human trafficking were sent back from Thailand to Laos. About 80 percent of the victims were under 18.
for sure, police do what they can, but they cannot do miracles.
i think the right solution are: - develop the country to give business and job opportunities to people in their own countries - inform inform and inform people, through TV, radio, chief of village...
