[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE 2024 ANNUAL TRAFFICKING IN
PERSONS REPORT: PROGRESS OVER POLITICS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL
HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
July 9, 2024
__________
Serial No. 118-124
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
56-569 PDF WASHINGTON : 2026
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking
JOE WILSON, South Carolina Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania BRAD SHERMAN, California
DARRELL ISSA, California GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ANN WAGNER, Missouri WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
BRIAN MAST, Florida AMI BERA, California
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY BARR, Kentucky TED LIEU, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
YOUNG KIM, California DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida COLIN ALLRED, Texas
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan ANDY KIM, New Jersey
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, SARA JACOBS, California
American Samoa KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio Florida
JIM BAIRD, Indiana GREG STANTON, Arizona
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York JONATHAN JACKSON, Illinois
CORY MILLS, Florida SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia JIM COSTA, California
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas JASON CROW, Colorado
JOHN JAMES, Michigan GABRIEL AMO, Rhode Island
KEITH SELF, Texas KWEISI MFUME, Maryland
RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
JAMES C. MOYLAN, Guam
Brendan Shields, Majority Staff Director
Sophia Lafargue, Minority Staff Director
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman
MARIA SALAZAR, Florida SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania, Ranking
AMATA RADEWAGEN, American Samoa Member
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas AMI BERA, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia SARA JACOBS, California
JOHN JAMES, Michigan KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
C O N T E N T S
----------
REPRESENTATIVES
Page
Opening Statement of Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Smith..... 1
Opening Statement of Ranking Member Susan Wild................... 5
Opening Statement of Rep. Rich McCormick......................... 5
Opening Statement of Rep. James Moylan........................... 6
WITNESSES
Statement of Hon. Cindy Dyer, Ambassador-At-Large to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons, U.S. Department of State........ 7
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Statement of Jason Tower, Country Director, Burma, United States
Institute of Peace............................................. 16
Prepared Statement............................................. 20
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 50
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 51
Hearing Attendance............................................... 52
Questions for the Record
Questions submitted to Cindy Dyer by Rep. Smith.................. 53
Questions submitted to Cindy Dyer by Rep, Wild................... 71
EXAMINING THE 2024 ANNUAL TRAFFICKING IN
PERSONS REPORT: PROGRESS OVER POLITICS
----------
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights,
and International Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:08 p.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. I have been advised by minority staff that Ms.
Wild is okay with starting. We usually like to extend that
courtesy, but she will be here shortly, so thank you.
This hearing of the Subcommittee on Global Health, Global
Human Rights, and International Organizations will come to
order.
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Mr. Smith. Today we will turn our attention again to the
evil of human trafficking and discuss ways the U.S. Government,
both Congress and the Administration, can combat this abhorrent
crime more effectively. This is the 43d congressional hearing
that I have chaired on human trafficking. Unfortunately, there
is much more to be done. Around the globe, an estimated 28
million people are enslaved in labor or sex trafficking, with
traffickers profiting about 236 billion annually.
Today we will specifically examine the 2024 Annual
Trafficking in Persons Report, or TIP Report, which the
Department of State release just 2 weeks ago on June 24. And I
would just note parenthetically getting the TIP Report
established, because I wrote the original law, was so hard
there were people in the Administration that said just put it
into country reports on human rights practices, make it a part
D or C or, you know, a subheading somewhere and not its own
report. And we fought very hard in a bipartisan way to get that
enacted, but it was very vigorously opposed and then finally,
thankfully, accepted.
As I was indicating, almost 25 years ago, I authored the
historic Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Once
again, the TVPA is up for reauthorization. My good friend and
colleague, Ranking Member Wild, and I have a House-passed bill,
H.R. 5856, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims
Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2023. We will
have to change that to 2024 when the Senate, God willing,
passes it.
It did pass the House this past February by an overwhelming
margin of 414 to 11. I do call on my friends and colleagues in
the U.S. Senate to take it up. I have reached out to them
continually, respectfully but continually and urgently. This
vital legislation should be enacted without haste to let
governments, civil society, the bad guys, the purveyors of this
heinous practice, and especially the victims and survivors know
that we have not stopped fighting or caring about this vital
human rights issue.
The reauthorization of key domestic and international
programs and funding, including the State Department's Office
to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the role of the
Ambassador-at-Large, and the continuation of the annual TIP
Report are all contained in the bill. It is time to get this
bill to the President's desk. It should have been there a long
time ago, but let's do it now before this session ends and we
start all over again in the next session.
The TVPA is a whole-of-government approach, as I think many
of you know, to combat sex and labor trafficking in the United
States and around the world. It puts forward a comprehensive
counter-trafficking in persons strategy that integrated the
three Ps--protection for victims of trafficking, prosecution of
the traffickers, and prevention of human trafficking in the
first place.
And sometimes we add a fourth for the partnerships as we
cannot--none of us can do it alone. And if we want to be
successful, we need those friends and allies across civil
society, and of course in other governments.
Among the law's many provisions was the creation of an
annual TIP Report. It was written by the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in Persons at the State Department and
analyzes countries' efforts to meet certain minimum standards
for elimination of human trafficking.
The tier rankings in the TIP Report is a vital tool for the
U.S. Government to fight human trafficking. It is also a great
mirror for those--and believe me, I meet with delegations all
the time who object to parts of it. And when you really get
down to it, they agree that what we are saying often is right,
but they don't like to be called out. And it is very important
that we be willing to speak truth to power in that way.
It is the gold standard for pushing governments to reform
their own laws, prosecute criminals, and take strong measures
to end trafficking in their countries. The TIP Report only
works when it judges governments strictly based on the minimum
standards for fighting human trafficking as laid out in the
TVPA, as amended.
Political considerations cannot seep into the report. And I
would note parenthetically there, in the past, we have had that
happen, where there were Ambassadors and there were others,
assistant secretaries and regional, who fought hard to keep
their country or countries off the Tier 3 rating. That is
totally unacceptable. That sells out the victims, as we all
know, and I know Hon. Cindy Dyer knows that so well, and very
often there is a fight.
Now differences of opinion are inevitable, but when it is
being done for other purposes and other parts of the agenda,
absolutely unacceptable. Call it the way it is and then decide
what is the best application of the prescribed sanctions, and
the like, in the bill.
I was glad to see this year that the TIP Report, the
world's top violators of human rights countries, such as China,
Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Russia, and Nicaragua,
rightfully remain ranked in Tier 3.
I was also glad to see that the TIP Report highlighted
Cuba's and China's role in state-sponsored forced labor, but we
can still take this--but we can still take this a step further
by having the tier ratings take into consideration the
countries who participate and purchase that forced labor,
including from Cuba's foreign medical missions.
Likewise, Laos was rightfully downgraded to the Tier 2
Watch List, in part due to a human trafficking threat rapidly
emerging out of Southeast Asia, where Chinese transnational
organized crime syndicates operate scam centers with impunity.
Bordering Laos, both Burma and Cambodia remain in the Tier 3
designation.
These criminals traffic innocent people from all over the
world, luring them to prison compounds with fake job
advertisements and offers. Only once these victims arrive at
apartment blocks surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire do
they realize they are hooked. They can't escape.
Victims are forced to work in these compounds conducting
elaborate online cryptocurrency scams known as ``pig
butchering.'' Forced by their traffickers to communicate
digitally with unsuspecting scam victims, including in the
United States, scam center workers attempt to strike up a text
through WhatsApp, or even through phone conversations, to gain
trust and build relationships.
Victims are then tricked into depositing money into
fraudulent so-called ``crypto investment platforms'' controlled
by the scam center. Once enough money is deposited, the scammer
withdraws the money, deletes the fake account, and disappears.
Through this dystopian fraud, innocent Americans are being
robbed of their life savings. Estimates of money stolen from
Americans through pig butchering scams are now over $3.5
billion. And without a whole of-government effort, the problem
will likely only get worse.
Yet pig butchering is a double crime. It destroys the lives
in the U.S. by robbing unsuspecting victims of their life
savings while it also is destroying the lives of the
trafficking victims in Southeast Asia through forced labor.
Most of these scam centers are in Burma, Laos, and
Cambodia. These countries' governments need to act to shut down
these vile operations, to help free the forced labor victims--
over 300,000 of them by 2023--and bring the perpetrators to
justice.
Neighboring countries such as Thailand, Singapore, and
Vietnam also do too little to combat the rampant human
trafficking occurring on and through their borders, as well as
the money laundering occurring through their financial
institutions.
Unlike the appropriate tier ranking for Laos, Cambodia, and
Burma, I would argue that Vietnam--and I have been pushing this
for years. I have traveled there. I have met with human rights
activists in Vietnam and victims. Vietnam does not warrant an
upgrade from Tier 2 Watch List to Tier 2. We cannot reward the
Communist Party of Vietnam for repeatedly misleading the U.S.
on its weak efforts to combat human trafficking.
Civil society organizations have reached out concerned
about Vietnam's sham upgrade to Tier 2 status due to their lack
of transparency and accountability for government officials.
That said, I was pleased to see that under the topics of
special interest the mention of trafficking for the purchase of
organ removal and forced organ harvesting.
I have a bill, H.R. 1154, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting
Act of 2023. It passed the House 413 to 2 in March--not of this
year, of last year. Can't get that out of the Senate either.
This bill imposes property, passport, and visa-blocking
sanctions on persons, individuals, and entities involved in
forced organ harvesting or trafficking in persons for the
purpose of organ removal.
The Frederick Douglass bill also contains a provision to
permanently include in the TIP Report information about the
trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal,
including cases and steps governments are taking--undertaking
to prevent, identify, and eliminate such trafficking.
Before closing, I would like to mention one more troubling
development. Recent years have seen the rise of a disturbing
new normalization of so-called sex work, intergenerational
sexual partnerships, or transnational--transactional, I should
say, sex. These terms are pushed by certain NGO's,
international organizations, and governmental organizations
alike, and they advocate for legalized prostitution.
Not only do these terms subtly undermine U.S. law in the
TVPA, which defines ``sex trafficking'' and ``commercial sex
acts,'' but they also attempt to normalize sex trafficking and
the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Let's be clear,
the TVPA defines the term ``commercial sex act'' as any sex act
on account of which anything of value--anything--is given to or
received by any person.
And any commercial sex act in which the person is induced
to perform such acts and has not attained the age of 18, it is
called sex trafficking under the TVPA. And that was a landmark
change we got in the year 2000 when it was signed into law.
I was shocked and disturbed to see that Belgium was
upgraded to Tier 1 after passing a new law in May 2024 on
legalizing the role of third parties, including pimps and
madams, and treating exploited women as employees and holding
them to account for refusing sex acts. Congress must stand
against this disturbing, ideological trend.
I agree fully with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence
Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, who wrote in June 2024
in her report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, and she said,
and I quote, ``Prostitution reduces women and girls to mere
commodities and perpetuates the system of discrimination and
violence that hinders their ability to achieve true equality.
Given the immense harm experienced by women and girls in
prostitution, it is important to use terminology that aligns
with international human rights law and standards. Terms like
'sex work' sanitize the harmful reality of prostitution.''
Prostitution is not a liberating job choice. Sex
trafficking should not be called ``sex work.'' Responsible
governments, organizations, and advocates have a duty to fight
this disturbing and twisted ideological trend.
Today we will hear--and I am deeply grateful to our
witnesses--from Ambassador Cindy Dyer, Ambassador-at-Large to
Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and from Jason
Tower, Burma Country Director at the United States Institute of
Peace and an expert in Southeast Asian trafficking scam
centers.
I would like to now yield to my good friend and colleague,
Susan Wild, for any comments she might have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER SUSAN WILD
Ms. Wild. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
convening this. Thank you to our witnesses.
I am, as always, appreciative of the opportunity to have
this hearing. As I stated in our last hearing on this subject,
combating the scourge of human trafficking, especially among
children but not exclusively, should never be a partisan issue.
Chairman Smith, I am proud to have worked with you and
other members across the aisle on this priority, and I look
forward to continuing that work. The release of the 2024
Trafficking in Persons, TIP, Report is an opportunity to take
stock of the progress we have made and the enormous amount of
work that remains to be done.
In my view, our priorities remain the same as those I
articulated in our last hearing, engaging in robust, principled
diplomacy, both bilaterally and in international fora,
reporting on countries consistently and without regard to
political pressure or geopolitical considerations, and being
willing to take on powerful interests, including very
profitable corporations, that benefit from the appalling
reality of child labor.
To all the advocates and survivors who may be here today or
may be watching this hearing, please know that we stand with
you and we will continue working on your behalf.
And, with that, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
I would like to recognize Mr. McCormick. Dr. McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Are we doing questions
right now?
Mr. Smith. No, no. Just any opening comments or----
OPENING STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE RICH McCORMICK
Mr. McCormick. I appreciate you all being here. This is an
extremely important topic. I recently got back from Bangladesh,
the Cox's Bazar area, which obviously has some issues with 1
million people in about a 13-square-kilometer area where child
labor and human trafficking and child trafficking is a massive
problem.
But we have our own problems here in the United States, so
I am looking forward to this discussion.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Moylan?
OPENING STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JAMES MOYLAN
Mr. Moylan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wild,
as well as my fellow members here. And thank you to the panel
for attending today. I appreciate your time and explaining to
us a lot of questions that we may have. Being from Guam, I am
very interested in the INDOPACOM area and will be asking you a
few questions. I appreciate your support today.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Ambassador Cindy Dyer--and thank you again for being here
and for your service--serves as the United States Ambassador-
at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons and leads
the Department of State's Office to Monitor and Combat Human
Trafficking.
Ambassador Dyer is a human rights advocate and lawyer with
three decades of experience working at the local, national, and
international levels to prevent and respond to human
trafficking, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
In December 2022, the Senate unanimously confirmed
Ambassador Dyer to lead the United States' global engagement in
combating human trafficking, and they made a very wise choice.
For 12 years, she was the Vice President for Human Rights at
Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO
advocating and advancing women's leadership, where she worked
to assess, improve, and implement policies related to human
trafficking and gender-based violence.
Prior to joining Vital Voices, she served in a
Presidential--as a Presidential appointment, as the Director of
the Office of Violence Against Women within the U.S. Department
of Justice, where she served as the liaison between DOJ,
Federal, State, tribal, and international governments, on
matters involving violence against women.
Ambassador Dyer began her career serving as a specialized
domestic and sexual violence prosecutor in Dallas, Texas, and
did that for more than 13 years.
Then we will hear from Jason Tower, who is the Burma
Country Director at the United States Institute of Peace, and
also serves as the Director of USIP's program on transnational
crime and security in Southeast Asia. Mr. Tower joined the USIP
in 2019 and has over 20 years of experience working on conflict
and security issues in Asia.
Since 2020, he has also conducted extensive research and
published widely on the rising influence of Chinese origin
crime groups across Southeast Asia, particularly in Myanmar.
Mr. Tower is one of the first experts to begin documenting
the sudden rise that forced labor scamming in mainland
Southeast Asia. Since early 2022, he has played a key role in
shining light on this poorly understood but rapidly growing
incident of human trafficking.
Thank you for being here today, and I yield to Ambassador
Dyer such time as she may consume.
STATEMENT OF CINDY DYER
Ms. Dyer. Thank you. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild,
and distinguished members of this subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the 2024
Trafficking in Persons Report, or TIP Report, which was
released on June 24, and the Department of State's efforts to
monitor and combat human trafficking worldwide.
The TIP Report, which my office produces annually, contains
narratives detailing global anti-trafficking efforts of 188
countries and territories, including the United States. It is
the world's most comprehensive resource of governmental anti-
trafficking efforts, including our own, and reflects the U.S.
Government's commitment to global leadership on this key human
rights, law enforcement, and national security issue.
This year's TIP Report includes 19 downgrades, with 17
downgrades from Tier 2 to the Tier 2 Watch List, including Hong
Kong, Laos, Malta, Rwanda, and Uruguay, and two countries--
Brunei and Sudan--downgraded to Tier 3.
There were 22 countries whose rankings improved, including
three--the Republic of Korea, Poland, and Suriname--who were
upgraded to Tier 1, and five upgraded from Tier 3. Notable
upgrades to Tier 2 include Bolivia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Egypt,
Malaysia, South Africa, and Vietnam.
The 2024 TIP Report documented several continuing and
emerging global trends.
First, we continued to track forced labor within Cuba's
medical missions across 53 countries, the PRC's Belt and Road
Initiative, and other PRC-affiliated projects in 32 countries,
and DPRK workers exploited abroad in 19 countries.
Second, the Department newly documented that Russian
authorities, middlemen, private military companies, or Russian-
affiliated forces used coercion, deception, and, in some cases,
force to recruit foreign nationals, particularly Central and
South Asian migrants, as well as citizens from Cuba and Syria,
as fighters in support of Russia's war of aggression in
Ukraine.
And, third, the report highlights the continued growth of
online scam operations, with centers emerging in new regions
and victims recruited from an expanding list of source
countries.
While the tier rankings are important, the TIP Report is,
above all, the U.S. Government's principal diplomatic and
diagnostic tool to guide relations with foreign governments on
human trafficking, with the narrative and recommendations
providing a roadmap to improvement, and the rankings a means to
encourage governments to increase and improve their anti-
trafficking efforts year after year.
In addition to narratives outlining steps governments are
proactively undertaking to combat trafficking, the 2024 TIP
Report also implicates additional governments in perpetrating
the crime itself with a policy or pattern of trafficking, now
including 13 countries, with Belarus added back to the list and
Sudan newly added alongside 11 countries that have remained on
the list, including Cuba, DPRK, PRC, and Russia.
This year's TIP Report introduction examines the role of
digital technology in the fight against human trafficking. In
particular, it highlights how traffickers use digital
technology in perpetuating and facilitating human trafficking,
but also how digital technology can be used effectively by the
anti-trafficking community to monitor and combat this heinous
crime.
One example of the nexus of human trafficking and digital
technology is the phenomenon of online scam operations, often
run by local PRC national-operated crime syndicates. These scam
centers have been predominantly located in Southeast Asia,
primarily in Burma, Cambodia, and Laos.
The 2024 TIP Report documents the expansion of online scam
operations from Southeast Asia to countries in the Western
Hemisphere, Europe, Africa, and the Gulf, ensnaring victims
from more than 60 countries.
But digital technology can also contribute to the solution
as well. For example, digital technology can be used to
disseminate information to help prevent trafficking and assist
victims. It can also empower law enforcement to uncover a
digital trail, helping bring perpetrators to justice.
Addressing human trafficking in today's world requires an
understanding and use of digital technology to uncover evidence
of trafficking, protect victims, prosecute perpetrators, and,
ideally, prevent this crime. These efforts will require
governments, law enforcement, technology companies, and civil
society to work together to develop and utilize innovative
technologies and approaches to address today's and tomorrow's
challenges.
The introduction to this year's TIP Report also addresses
other areas of interest, including Cuba's coercive labor-export
program, in which tens of thousands of workers, the majority of
whom are medical professionals, are sent around the world, but
often have their wages taken by the Cuban government and are
not free to leave the program.
Other topics of special interest include forced marriage,
trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal, the
intersection between trafficking and persons with disabilities,
and the importance of worker empowerment as a tool in combating
labor trafficking.
The TIP office remains committed to listening and centering
the voices of those with lived experience of human trafficking.
Partnering with survivors in meaningful ways, from drafting
sections of this year's TIP Report introduction to advising us
on our programming, is critical to establishing effective
victim-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally competent
anti-trafficking policies and strategies that address
prevention, protection, and prosecution. Survivor input is a
central tenet of the Federal Government's approach to combating
human trafficking.
As a movement, we must engage survivors early and often in
the development of our policies and programs. Allow me to share
a few recent examples of State Department survivor engagement.
This year we were honored to have members of the U.S.
Advisory Council on Human Trafficking join the U.S. delegation
at meetings of the Organization of American States and at the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, delivering
remarks on the importance of survivor leadership in anti-
trafficking work and other topics, such as prevention
strategies.
A Council member again joined the Cabinet officials and
other leaders from across the government in the February
meeting of the President's Interagency Task Force to Monitor
and Combat Trafficking in Persons.
The TIP office has increased funding for locally based and
survivor-led initiatives through its foreign assistance
programming. Earlier this year we invited organizations to
submit applications to provide technical assistance to foreign
governments, civil society organizations, and public
international organizations to establish survivor leadership
and partnership structures around the world.
While modest in size, our foreign assistance programs,
which include bilateral and regional initiatives, Child
Protection Compact partnerships, and our research-driven,
evidence-based Program to End Modern Slavery projects, punch
far above their weight in terms of reach and impact. Our multi-
year, phased approached means that as of the start of this year
we have more than 100 bilateral and regional projects in 84
countries totaling over $240 million.
On the same day we launched the TIP Report, we also put out
a solicitation for proposals to address recommendations in the
report. This includes potential new programming touching
priority issues in every region of the world; for example,
potential projects focused on online scam operations and
reducing the reliance on victim testimony in criminal justice
proceedings in the Western Hemisphere as well as addressing
human trafficking in the Belt and Road Initiative.
We are also working to establish Child Protection Compact
partnerships with several governments. And earlier this year we
launched the Partnership to Prevent Trafficking in Persons with
the government of Zambia. This P2P program builds on the
partnership model of the CPC program but expands the anti-
trafficking efforts to focus on adults as well as children.
As long as there is a profit motive to exploit other human
beings for gain trafficking is at risk of existing. But working
together, whether across the aisle or across the ocean, we can
work to end this abhorrent practice.
So, again, thank you for all of your support and especially
Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, and Representatives
Salazar, Amata, and Manning, as well as House Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman McCaul, for shepherding the Frederick
Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection
Reauthorization Act of 2023 through the House.
I very much hope to see passage of a Trafficking Victims
Protection Act reauthorization this Congress.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dyer follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ambassador, for your
testimony and leadership.
I would like to now turn to Mr. Tower.
STATEMENT OF JASON TOWER
Mr. Tower. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild,
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the
invitation to be here to speak to the growing threat that
forced labor scamming represents to the United States and to
global security.
The United States Institute of Peace is an independent,
non-partisan institute established by the U.S. Congress that
works internationally on the prevention and mitigation of
violent conflict and to support U.S. national security
interests overseas.
I will be speaking today to the findings of a new USIP
senior study group report that was published in May 2024 titled
Transnational Crime in Southeast Asia: A Growing Threat to
Global Peace and Security, as well as to ongoing research
undertaken by USIP on issues related to forced labor scamming
and the role that especially Chinese origin crime groups play
in this new form of crime.
Since 2022, a new form of highly sophisticated online
scamming known as pig butchering has emerged as a growing
threat to U.S. national and global security, and I would say at
this point that we really face a global security crisis as a
result of this new form of criminality. Pig butchering involves
establishing a relationship of trust with a target over an
online platform, often this being a romantic relationship
through which the perpetrator asserts psychological control
over the victim, and ultimately the victim is compelled into
investing everything that she or he owns into a fraudulent
online cryptocurrency platform.
The perpetrator then disappears with the funds, and in most
cases around the world victims are not only unable to recover
their worldly possessions, many of them are often left deeply
depressed, and we are also seeing growing instances of suicide
among those who have been impacted by these scams.
This form of scamming is being perpetrated by transnational
organized crime groups from the People's Republic of China
based in Southeast Asia, where they have relocated over the
past two decades and where they have established a web of elite
influence, and in some instances have even taken over control
of territories, establishing criminal zones from which they can
engage in criminal activity in impunity.
These PRC origin crime groups have set up thousands of
compounds to house these pig butchering scams across the
region, and they are presently spanning out of the Southeast
Asia region into other parts of the world, notably into Dubai
and into Africa.
The U.S. lost over $3.5 billion U.S. to these scams
perpetrated by the Chinese origin crime groups out of Southeast
Asia in 2023, and that is only the amount that has been
reported, noting that the majority of the cases go unreported.
Globally, USIP found that these criminal groups steal over
$63 billion U.S. per year from people in more than 100
different countries. They have powered these scams using forced
labor, tricking hundreds of thousands of people into cyber
slavery through online recruitment scams, another form of
scamming, which involves enticing victims with the promise of
high-paying jobs, only to traffic them into forced labor
conditions where they are subjected to torture, often
threatened to be sold into slavery in other compounds if they
do not successfully scam or meet very aggressive targets by the
scam syndicate operators.
Nationals of 66 countries, including the United States,
have been trafficked or otherwise tricked into these scam
compounds. This is happening on an industrial scale in three
countries--Myanmar, Cambodia, and in Laos--but is also found in
the Philippines, and again it is spreading further around the
world with evidence of these scam syndicates having been found
in several difficult jurisdictions.
The scams depend on the criminal actors maintaining free
and open access to a full range of social media platforms and
recruitment websites. So many of the victims, both of the
scams, the pig butchering scams, as well as human trafficking
are targeted over common platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp,
WeChat, TikTok, or LinkedIn.
These criminal groups also maintain deep ties in mainland
China, with much of the infrastructure that houses these scam
syndicates today actually being built by Chinese state-owned
enterprises, which accepted lucrative contracts from the
Chinese crime groups to build the infrastructure where these
victims of human trafficking and forced labor scamming are now
held.
The criminal syndicates have also built deep relationships
in almost every country in Southeast Asia where they tap into
key cross-border resources needed to fuel the scam centers.
This includes using countries such as Thailand and Vietnam as
transit countries for victims of human trafficking, using
Singapore, the Philippines, and Malaysia to launder funds and
to develop new financial tools and cryptocurrency products that
are used in the scams, as well as really targeting every
country in the Southeast Asia region with forced labor
scamming.
And we are seeing that actually the region and the
countries of ASEAN are some of the hardest hit countries, both
in terms of losses to the scams as well as trafficking victims
into scam centers.
This activity now represents a direct threat to U.S.
interests at home and abroad. According to U.S. authorities,
Americans are now targeted more than any other group in the
world by these scams. This is being accelerated by an
aggressive crackdown that the Chinese government has undertaken
since 2022 on scams that are targeting Chinese nationals.
The result is that the Chinese origin crime syndicates are
adapting. China reported a 30 percent decrease in these scams
over the past 8 months, while the U.S. reports unprecedented
losses as many of the criminal syndicates have pivoted to
targeting more Americans and targeting more of a global
population.
These trends also undermine years of U.S. investments in
countering human trafficking. For the first time, you are
seeing countries like Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos become
destination countries of human trafficking. And according to a
recent report by INTERPOL, anyone anywhere can now become a
victim of trafficking simply by applying for a job online.
Another threat to the U.S. stems from China's response to
these crimes. With many countries becoming more desperate to
find a solution, China is leveraging this issue to strengthen
the influence of its police and its authoritarian form of
policing around the globe, enhancing also its security
influence, which threatens U.S. investments in democracy,
governance, and human rights.
Sadly, the response to this phenomenon to present is
limited, ad hoc, and uncoordinated. Awareness of the pig
butchering scams in the U.S. and many other countries around
the world remains low. Law enforcement is not tooled with the
technologies and skills needed to trace and seize especially
cryptocurrency. That is the main form of currency stolen by
these scams.
Social media companies are not held accountable when their
platforms are used to traffic victims or to steal billions of
dollars from unsuspecting victims. Resources for victim
response are also limited given the new patterns in victims of
human trafficking and the traditional organizations that are
responding not being tooled with resources needed to support
those victims.
When it comes to human trafficking into the compounds,
efforts are also very ad hoc. Recent cases of victims from
Morocco and Uganda that were trafficked into Myanmar required
that senior officials from those countries be sent out to the
region to engage in weeks of negotiations with criminals and
armed groups in Myanmar controlling these compounds with many
of the victims being injured or even killed trying to get out.
In other cases, families have paid large ransoms to extract
their relatives that have been trapped in these centers, with
there being instances of people paying up to $100,000 to
retrieve their relatives from the scam centers.
Others have been treated as criminals rather than victims
of trafficking when being brought out, and this is happening
especially in the People's Republic of China, but then also
across the region more broadly.
In our USIP senior study group report on these issues, we
identify this as a growing threat to global peace and security,
and we urge that the U.S. considers a whole-of-government
response to this phenomenon of forced labor scamming.
Potentially this could be led by the National Security Council,
which could establish an interagency task force to steer this
effort both at home and abroad, as well as to assert U.S.
leadership on this issue internationally.
The report also looks at other options, including advancing
much more robust international cooperation, to systematically
constrain the criminal networks that are behind these scams.
This may require leveraging sanctions or other punitive
measures to target the malign actors that are behind these
scams, including elites in countries that continue to provide
criminal actors with protection in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos,
in particular.
The report also looks to increase investments in the
gathering and sharing of information on all aspects of the
forced labor scamming industry, and in the building of the
capacity of law enforcement and regulatory agencies to recover
funds, particularly by enhancing capacities to trace
cryptocurrencies.
It also suggests engaging in a nationwide public awareness-
raising program to protect U.S. citizens and also that the U.S.
support similar awareness-raising programs internationally.
Other recommendations include investments in prevention of
new forms of technology-fueled human trafficking focusing
specifically on mobilizing active involvement of the private
sector in reversing some of these trends in the social media
space.
And, last, we call to hold the PRC accountable given that
it was in fact the People's Republic of China that played a
significant role in enabling this current crisis, look at
demanding that China share intelligence on these issues, and
take decisive action to prevent Chinese origin crime groups
from harming the United States, in maybe a similar manner as to
what we have done around the Fentanyl crisis.
Thank you for inviting me to testify, and I look forward to
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tower follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Mr. Tower, thank you very much for highlighting
a seriously underappreciated and unacknowledged problem that is
happening as well as your other work. Thank you for that.
I would like to ask a couple of questions and yield to my
colleagues. I have more questions I would like to pose.
I would like to start off with the whole issue, remember,
last time, Ambassador Dyer, I asked about the unaccompanied
minors, the 85,000. That was the generally accepted number of
those coming across our border who we had lost contact with,
did not know--I mean, I reached out to Homeland Security, as
you recommended, and we still don't know what happened to those
kids. And that number could be far in excess of that now. We
don't know. It probably is. And HHS as well, but Homeland
Security is what you had recommended. We reached out to both.
And I am wondering, you know, what can be done? Are we
trying to track those kids, find out where they are? I mean, I
am a great advocate of adoption, and I know how important home
studies are and how important it is to vet those who are going
to receive a child and make that child part of their home.
Well, when the conveyance of that child is occurring en
masse, and that is what has been happening, those kinds of very
high bar standards are not even close to being fulfilled. So it
would be easy for a scammer to get their hands on a kid to
sexually exploit and/or labor exploitation, but we still seem
to be woefully ill-informed about--what about those kids?
Ms. Dyer. The plight of the unaccompanied children who
have--especially those who have been identified working in
completely inappropriate workplace environments that has been
reported in the news, it is heartbreaking. I do recall your
interest and your passion for this subject, and I am happy to
report what we have done most recently.
In particular, the State Department works closely with our
colleagues at DHS and HHS who share responsibility for
processing unaccompanied children and caring for them, placing
them, and discharging them hopefully into loving and
appropriate homes.
We know that the increase in the reports of child labor
violations, especially as we spoke about of migrant children,
is a--it is terrible in itself, and it is a risk factor for
becoming a risk of trafficking persons.
This is something that actually we covered fairly
significantly in the U.S. narrative of this year's Trafficking
in Persons Report. HHS is vetting and assessing sponsors, and
they have in fact expanded their post-release services, and
they are committed to expanding those post-release services to
all of the children that have been placed with a sponsor.
In particular, the Trafficking in Persons Report, as we
do--as we address this issue globally, we are specifically
recommending increased funding so that all children have legal
representation. Having access to legal counsel will provide
specific security and safety for them.
Additionally, we--and I think this is something that you
had brought up--are encouraging and recommending increased in-
person wellness checks. As we know, the children that you have
spoken about were individuals. They were with a sponsor that
did not respond to a phone call. And so our Trafficking in
Persons Report is, therefore, recommending then in-person
wellness checks for individuals that don't receive--that don't
respond to a phone call.
Mr. Smith. If I can interrupt, is that being done now?
Ms. Dyer. That is recommended in the report, and I do know
that----
Mr. Smith. That doesn't take legislation. That just takes
executive action. Why won't they do it?
Ms. Dyer. What we know for sure is that HHS has already
expanded the post-relief services, and they are seeking funding
to expand them to all children. I think more specificity--I
might need to refer to my colleagues at HHS, but I do know that
they have--and this was reported in the Trafficking in Persons
Report as a positive development--there was a notable expansion
of services, specifically post-release services, to children.
Mr. Smith. Has there been any accountability for the
85,000? Have any been discovered to have been exploited? Have
they been brought to a safe haven of some kind, whether it be
within a family or some government institution?
Ms. Dyer. I think----
Mr. Smith. What about those kids?
Ms. Dyer. I think that the specific circumstances of the
individual children would be something that maybe we would have
to refer to my colleagues at HHS. I don't have access to the
specific identifying information.
Mr. Smith. Could you make that inquiry? I mean, you are the
top TIP person, and----
Ms. Dyer. Yes. And as you know----
Mr. Smith [continuing]. We believe in our own neighborhoods
these kids are being horribly mistreated. We don't know. They
are probably very afraid to come forward. And, you know, in the
Fiscal Year 2023 amount of 15 million, that was reduced. It was
18 million in 2022, so it looks like there is even less money
available for this.
So, but I don't think it is a matter of money. I think it
is a matter of prioritization and saying if that were my child,
heaven and earth would be moved before I would say, oh, that
person is OK, when you have any kind of doubt whatsoever,
again, using the model, if I could, of adoption. I mean, we do
vigorous, vigorous vetting with adoption. Even there there is
problems, but they are mitigated because of that vetting
process.
So if you could get back to us with that, it would be
extraordinarily helpful.
Ms. Dyer. Yes. As you know, we work closely through the
senior policy operating group. And in fact some of these
improvements that were noted in the TIP Report were discussed
in those meetings, and we are happy to followup on that.
Mr. Smith. OK. Thank you. You know, you mentioned the
senior policy operating group. COVID taught us that many of
these purveyors of harm to children quickly during COVID-19
went to using the internet and using it very effectively to
recruit, groom, and ECPAT did one report after another and
exposed.
And we also, you know, like a chorus called out for more
protection for these kids. And I am just wondering, what do you
think needs to be done to further protect kids from that kind
of online exploitation where they are groomed? I mean, we saw
in one instance there was a grooming that took place within an
hour. You know, the person befriended this vulnerable young
girl, and next thing you know she was being exploited. It
equally goes for the boys, too, where these people are masters
and very masterful at exploiting people. What are we doing on
that front?
Ms. Dyer. As the Trafficking in Persons Report has noted,
and as you have said, we have definitely seen an increase in
online sexual exploitation of children, sex trafficking of
children, and child sexual abuse material in both the U.S. and
other countries post-COVID, and we absolutely acknowledge that
social media can be used to lure kids.
This is one of the reasons that the TIP Report highlighted
the introduction focusing on technology and its impact on
trafficking and how it can be used for good and also for bad.
Specific to your questions, we recommend that parents,
government, tech companies, and media partner. We believe that
there should be a prioritization and--on education, so that
children have online safety tools. Additionally, if kids are
online, we are suggesting and promoting that--perhaps
developing and utilizing online tools and meet them where they
are.
We also know that technology can be used for good. It can
help identify victims. It can help victims self-report, and it
can help victims access service and know about service. There
are a couple of examples of where technology has been used for
good that I will flag.
One is the Trafficking in Persons office has supported the
International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, who
are using a multilingual virtual training to provide much
needed training on how to use technology in many different
languages to thousands of criminal justice professionals.
I will also highlight the very successful Child Protection
Compact that was focused on Philippines and specifically on
online sexual exploitation, which has seen a measurable
decrease in that crime. So I think that this is an opportunity
for us to be aware of how it can be dangerous, but also utilize
how it can be effective.
And there are a couple of other notes about this that are
noted in the introduction, including IOM has a counter-
trafficking data collaborative, which makes data more
available. And one other one which I think is a good example of
companies doing good, IBM had a--has a traffic analysis hub
which uses AI data sets to help us better respond to this
problem.
I appreciate your interest, and that was exactly why we had
the technology focus in our introduction this year.
Mr. Smith. I will just ask two others, and then in the
second round I have some additional questions, because out of
deference to my good friend and colleagues, and I ask them to
take however much time they would like as well.
With Cuba, you did mention and we do know that Cuba is a
situation where they forcibly send healthcare workers to other
countries, and I am wondering what those recipient countries
are doing to ensure that they are not receiving a forced
laborer coming to their shores.
I remember years ago I had a hearing in 2012 with Dr. Oscar
Biscet, who was an OB/GYN who was horribly mistreated by Fidel
Castro, put in solitary prison. He was an OB/GYN, like I said,
and he was just an amazing man. He actually came to testify not
here, but on the island of Cuba, through a clandestine means.
That is how brave this man is. And he talked about that and
just how foolish the Western world is vis-a-vis Cuba in buying
into these false narratives.
And I will give the example myself. I nominated--I was one
of many, but I led the effort in the Congress to have Liu
Xiaobo named as the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he got it. So
I was there at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, dinner with some
of the Nobel Peace Prize members of the Parliament that do the
actual selection, so I asked them all about Cuba. And they
said, ``Oh, they have a great health system, and they export
doctors.''
And I said, ``Do you know those doctors go under duress?''
And that is putting it mildly, that they do not go voluntarily.
They are forced. It is not like some benign, you know,
humanitarian initiative on the part of the Cuban government. It
is a way of promoting their policies at the expense of these
men and women who are forced into that service.
I was amazed that they were so ill-informed about that. So,
you know, what are these other countries doing to say, if you
are going to send us doctors, LPNs, nurses, and the like, we
want to make sure they are coming in an absolute voluntary
fashion.
Second, on Vietnam, I have chaired dozens of hearings on
Vietnam, gone there many times. I remember when CPC was coming
up a country of particular concern, and the Bush
administration, in order to curry favor with them to get a
trade deal, lifted the country of particular concern even
though the policies were egregious when it came to religious
freedom, wiped it all out, gave it to them, and they said the
day that they got the trade agreement that there will be no
linkage whatsoever to human rights, including religious
freedom.
I couldn't believe how brazen they were and how
unappreciative they were to the kowtowing by George W. Bush,
which he did, and I argued with them incessantly. I have been
trying ever since to get that back.
There is a parallel here, in my humble opinion, with
trafficking. Because we wanted to curry favor with the
Vietnamese government vis-a-vis China, for example, as maybe
like a new China card going back to the old Soviet Union
mentality, we are willing to overlook very serious human rights
abuses against journalists, on religious freedom, and torture,
and trafficking.
And I have been arguing--I have a bill in right now called
the Vietnam Human Rights Act. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, is the
primary co-sponsor. We really believe it is a bi-partisan
effort. It has passed three times, gone over to the Senate, and
holds get put on it because, you know, we are not going to tell
them what to do on human rights. It is like if they have a good
human rights policy, we want to applaud them, not hold them to
account.
I can't figure out why Vietnam is not a Tier 3 country. I
follow it very closely. Forced labor is a problem. Sex
trafficking is always a problem, but forced labor is a problem.
And even the first prosecution under my law, the Trafficking
Victims Protection Act of 2000, was against the Vietnamese
government of all things. They never paid up. They never did
anything. They just looked the other way and hoisted their
finger at us in a very disrespectful way.
So I can't get, how did we--how did they get off or how are
they not on Tier 3? Those are the two questions.
Ms. Dyer. I will answer them in reverse order, sir. With
regard to Vietnam, please know that our staff works all year--I
know that the TIP Report gets a lot of flurry of attention in
June, but please know that our staff is working all year long
to obtain as much information about countries as we can.
We are working here in D.C. but also our staff in the
embassies around the world, and we are working to gather
information from not only governments but also all sources
available, including NGO's, international organization, open
sources, and media, and then objectively assessing the
information that we obtain against the minimum standards in the
TVPA, and then specifically comparing that information to the
year before.
As you very well know, Vietnam was in a situation where
they could not stay on the Tier 2 Watch List. They had to go up
or down this year. Our choice was putting them up to Tier 2 or
down to Tier 3. When we looked at the information that we
obtained from every different source throughout the entire year
and compared it to how Vietnam did last year, they had improved
from how they did last year.
Specifically, we noted an increase in investigations,
prosecutions, and convictions. But, as we know, prosecution
alone is not what we look at. We also saw an increase in victim
identification and assistance to those victims. So the
protection measure had increased.
Specifically, of particular note, is the online scam
operations. Vietnam repatriated more than 4,000 victims from
online scam operations, and they also consulted with NGO's and
international organizations on their amended legislation. Now,
they absolutely have a big improvement that they need to do,
and this was very critically pointed out in the narrative,
specifically regarding concerns about complicity.
We noted that they closed the investigation and reinstated
a person who was allegedly complicit in very harmful practices.
Additionally, we also acknowledged and called out that they did
not consistently screen and identify victims who were rescued,
so to speak, from those online scam operations.
But when we looked at the data that we obtained this year
and compared it to last year, as required by the TVPA, it was
more appropriate to move them up than down when comparing those
2 years.
I would love to turn my attention now to the first question
that you asked me regarding Cuba, and I have to say that I had
a similar situation as what you described. I had the benefit of
meeting with several survivors of--individuals specifically
from Cuba's medical missions, and I met directly with these
amazing heroes.
Some of them had left that mission years before. Some of
them had left only 1 or 2 years. So we had a huge age span, and
it was really that meeting with them that inspired us to have a
special interest box on Cuba and to more vehemently call this
out and specifically State that the government of Cuba does
profit from forced labor in their export program. It is in fact
a significant revenue source.
Obviously, as you well know, we have been raising these
concerns since 2010, and it has been a policy and pattern
country for 5 years. But what we have done this year is take
that meeting with participants of this program and worked with
them to develop survivor-recommended suggestions and
recommendations for countries.
For countries who are going to participate in this program
despite the severe concerns about forced labor, there are
things that these survivors want them to do, and so we have
taken that survivor-led recommendation list and shared it with
every country that we know of who participates in that program.
I will give you an example of some of the information that
is included in there, which means investigating the conditions
regularly of these medical professionals, auditing any numbers
or reports that the Cuban medical professionals may give you,
contracting directly with the doctors rather than with the
government of Cuba, making your agreement public, which is
currently not done.
And then the final thing that I will say, just to make sure
that we were using every opportunity that we had, I spoke
personally with the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of
Slavery, Obokata, and the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in
Persons, Mullally, so that we are organizing our efforts and
being--you know, coalescing and really presenting a united
front to address this terrible abuse.
Thank you so much for asking me about it.
Mr. Smith. I would just point out that Vietnam, there was a
June 24th Reuters story----
Ms. Dyer. Yes.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. And I am sure you saw it, and the
questions are being raised about Hanoi's accuracy, honesty, in
conveying information to us. And, you know, when you have a
government that is known for abuse in a myriad of areas, you
know, there needs to be a sense of skepticism, healthy
skepticism, to accept their numbers. And human rights groups
have raised that with you, and I hope you take that back.
And to compare it to last time, last time they should have
been Tier 3. You know, they should have been Tier 3 for a
number of times because they are--and I worry that geopolitical
considerations are crowding out the concern for human rights,
and trafficking in particular, because of this other part of
our geopolitical strategy for that area vis-a-vis China.
So I do thank you for your answer, but if you could just
keep that in mind.
And Dr. Thang is here, I just wanted to point out, he is
with Boat People SOS, that has been a great friend and advocate
for the people of Vietnam. And just give an example--I am sorry
to my colleagues, going on. But back when--during the Clinton
administration they wanted to forcibly repatriate people who
were part of the comprehensive plan of action, there were
numbers of people deployed all over Asia, including--and I went
to different refugee sites, including High Island and Hong
Kong--and we were forcibly sending people back saying they are
not refugees. And he came forward, ``he'' being Dr. Thang, with
credible, actionable, information that they were--that there
was a corruption rampant in the selection process.
I did an amendment on the floor that passed that ensured
that we didn't--that we didn't have somebody else contracted
out, and 20,000 people came over. But I had four hearings on
that, and the Administration was adamant that, no, these aren't
refugees.
They have repatriation monitors that are waiting. When they
come to Vietnam, no re-education camp for them. Instead, they
will--they will be monitored. So I had a hearing with the
monitor, one of them. There are only seven. And I said, ``Who
accompanies you when you are in that village or town, or
whatever it might be?''
And he said, ``Well, the Secret Police.''
So do you think anybody is going to say, ``Oh, by the way,
I am in for a horrible time here'' when sitting right next to
him is somebody from the Secret Police? Ain't going to happen.
So, you know, Hanoi has a horrible reputation for
dishonesty.
I would like to now yield to Dr. McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you
all being here today. This is an incredibly important topic,
one of dire consequences for those people who are involved.
I think we're all aware of it and we all care very much so.
So, I would never accuse anybody of anything other than that. I
think everybody here really cares. And, that's why we're here.
With that said, I'd also like to take an opportunity to
recognize Governor Kemp in Georgia and First Lady Marty, for
their effort to clean up what we believe is a hub for child
trafficking in Atlanta, which we really tried to tackle and
take it very seriously in our home State.
I think it's interesting, Ms. Ambassador, that we're
currently in the Tier One Category, I believe, correct?
Ms. Dyer. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCormick. Have we ever not been in Tier One?
Ms. Dyer. We have not.
Mr. McCormick. OK. And, I think the Tier Two Category, I'm
just going to read off the list of what's defined as, as far as
what we, because we're researching what defines each category.
Tier Two is countries whose governments do not fully meet
the Trafficking Victim's Protection Act minimum standards, but
are making significant efforts to bring themselves into
compliance with those standards.
And, for which the estimated number of victims of severe
forms of trafficking is very significant or significantly
increasing and their country is not taking proportional
concrete actions.
One thing that disturbs me, and I mentioned before that I
had just come back from Bangladesh and Cox's Bazar, where they
have a million people there. And they're in Tier Two.
And, I'm sure Malaysia is even worse. I didn't see them, or
sorry, Myanmar. I didn't even see them on the list. But, I'm
sure they're not doing well.
You have a million people, but each person has strict
accountability. We can really keep track of every single person
there.
Why? Because they have to subsist on $8.00 per person, per
month. So, you track that pretty, pretty incredibly strictly,
right? So, we have a good accountability of the people.
Here in the United States, we lack the same accountability.
One thing that disturbs me greatly is we have a southern border
where we had at least ten million people come across in the
last few years.
Of that, at least in the 1921 and 1922 era, we had 85
thousand children come across, which a significant portion of
them were handed over to people we have no idea who they are in
relationship to the children. We stopped the DNA testing.
We stopped DNA testing which we knew at least around 9
percent were unrelated genetically. So then, we stopped it for
some reason, knowing that that's a problem, knowing that the
coyotes and traffickers of children would use that against
those children, we stopped testing people genetically.
Single parents coming across who could be kidnaping their
children from the other parent, we don't do anything about
that. We have up to 70 percent of all women being sexually
exploited as they come across the southern border.
And, we have two million that got away. We have no idea
anything about them, including the children that get away that
haven't even been addressed.
So, how is it that the United States is doing a good job
and Bangladesh is doing a bad job in comparison? Because it
seems a bit hypocritical to me.
Ms. Dyer. Thank you. And, you actually bring up a really
good point that I wanted to take the opportunity to sort of
clarify.
The Trafficking in Persons Report compares a government's
efforts during the reporting period to how that government did
during the previous reporting period. It doesn't actually
compare countries to one another.
The way that it was wisely set up is that we have metrics
and pieces of data that we compare for this reporting period,
versus how that country did the reporting period before.
Mr. McCormick. Perfect. So, addressing that, apples to
apples, the United States to the United States. Before we
tested people's DNA. Before we had a secure border.
Before people weren't coming over and unaccounted for.
Before we didn't have 85 thousand children coming across with
no accountability.
How are we not doing worse in our Tier comparison to the
previous years? That's my question.
Ms. Dyer. In this reporting period, I'll tell you some of
the specific pieces of data that we did consider in this
analysis. One is that more money was spent for services.
Another was that the Administration deployed the most
agents and officials ever to the border.
Mr. McCormick. OK. I'm going to stop you right there,
because I hear this all the time. Money spent. How's that doing
for schools?
Money spent. How's that doing for the border? More border
patrol agents to do what? Process people. And, that's why
they're not undocumented migrants, they're very well documented
illegal invaders, just to make a point.
Ms. Dyer. Allow me to give a different number. We in--we
had an increase in the number of Federal prosecutions and an
increase in the number of convictions for both sex trafficking
and labor trafficking, as compared to the year before.
Mr. McCormick. Right.
Ms. Dyer. We also did----
Mr. McCormick. How many by numeric standards did you have
an increase in? How many more prosecutions numerically?
Ms. Dyer. I do not have that figure in front of me. But,
I'm happy to followup with you.
Mr. McCormick. OK. So, I'm just going to make another
point. When you have ten million people coming across the
border, you have no genetic testing, you know that people are
being sexually exploited, you don't know which children belong
to who, I think that's a severe lack of accountability.
I think it's hypocritical. And, I think we need to stop
with the cooking of the books. We need to have accountability.
We should go back to genetic testing.
We should not be encouraging people to come across the
border mass by coyotes who basically exploit child trafficking,
human trafficking, illegal drug trafficking. This is a
catastrophe of the southern border that is absolutely
undeniably affecting children in the most negative and
egregious ways.
We should be ashamed of ourselves. And, I just, I don't
think you're understanding my point when I'm saying, we are not
doing our job.
As a Tier One nation who is supposed to be leading the way,
the United States with all the technologies, all the things
that we say we stand for, not getting children the right
representation when it comes to accountability, and making sure
they are not raped and trafficked and taken away from their
families, because we just don't know. And, that's the truth.
And, that's what I want to leave you with. Because, I
think, unless you can explain how we have better accountability
than we did 4 years ago, I just don't think it's worth the
conversation until we can actually get back to that point.
Ms. Dyer. I think that one of the things is that the
President independently issued a proclamation which suspended
irregular entry until the numbers of unlawful crossings had
dropped. And, he did this independently.
And, that is something that happened during this part
reporting period, which was an improvement from the year
before.
Mr. McCormick. So, he suspended what?
Ms. Dyer. He suspended all irregular entries.
Mr. McCormick. So, there's no--what is irregular versus a
regular entry?
Ms. Dyer. The border, in an effort to have a safe and
humane and protected border, there is a requirement that if you
want to present for seeking asylum or for some other reason,
you have to utilize the CBP One app, and use it at a particular
entry.
And, they are funneling in an effort to do really what
you're saying, so that you have a better idea of who is coming
in, so that people are not coming in without us knowing who
they are. So, there were efforts made.
But, I will also point out that this is also, we get our
information about the government efforts not just from what the
government gives to us, we receive information from civil
society organizations, NGO service providers,----
Mr. McCormick. I've been to the border. I've seen it.
Ms. Dyer. And, these are----
Mr. McCormick. And, I'm just going to interrupt you for a
second, because we're kind of out of time and I want to respect
Mr. Moylan's time.
But, let's get real. Because they filled out an app,
because you said the child belongs to me, because you're a
coyote or you're whomever and you're maybe or maybe not related
to a child, doesn't give me any confidence that we've improved
accountability.
I think it's all talk. It's all paperwork. It can all be
absolutely cheated on. We have no better accountability, and we
don't know who these children are with. We don't know if
they're related to them.
I think, we've been actually supporting a farce when it
comes to accountability, and it needs to stop now. And, I'm
going to end with that. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Doctor. Mr. Moylan?
Mr. Moylan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Dyer, obviously as
my colleagues and the Chairman has been discussing, these
transnational criminal organizations, these TCOs are, they
present big challenges for us, of course.
And, most countries just can't adapt to it. And, especially
in the Indo-Pacific area, which is my greatest concern.
These groups are indifferent to national borders, as stated
by my colleague here. And, groups like the Yakuza and the
Chinese Triad, and Southeast Asia criminal and terrorist
groups, they just exploit international law to do their
operations. They don't care. They really don't care.
So, Ms. Dyer, how can we, as the United States, better
leverage these resources that we have, and coordinate better
with global partners and our adversaries, if we have to, within
the Indo-Pacific on these common issues?
Ms. Dyer. I think that there are a number of things that we
can do to improve the situation that you have spoken about. One
is through the information in the Trafficking in Persons
Report.
That Report attempts to highlight the challenges and the
problems that you have laid out. As one example, knowing that
the PRC is behind some of these transnational organizations, we
have specifically called out their treatment of Uyghurs and
other Tibetans, other minorities.
Additionally, we have highlighted in the Report the
treatment of PRC nationals in the Belt and Road Initiative.
And, of course, we have highlighted the online scam
traffickers. The online scam operation traffickers often have
links to the PRC.
But, some of the things that we are doing to address this
and actually try to create an improvement, is exactly what
you're talking about, which is, regional cooperation. One of
the things that I did when I was traveling, in my travels,
which I heavily focused on the region that was impacted by the
online scam operations.
Last year I actually traveled to Thailand, where I had the
opportunity to meet with Mr. Tower, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia,
and Singapore. But, in Singapore, I gave the keynote address to
the ASEAN governments.
All ASEAN governments were represented. And, I spoke about
the issue of the online scam operations and the need to have
greater regional cooperation.
This is not something that we're going to be able to solve
in a silo. It is definitely expanding. And, we've got to have
greater regional cooperation.
One additional thing, in addition to speaking to that
group, I have brought this issue up in my bilateral meetings
and multilateral meetings, including with the Organization for
Security and Cooperation and the Organization for American
States.
But, one thing that I, we also listened to experts. And, we
try our best to do what they recommend. Experts like Mr. Tower.
And, I'm going to give you just four examples of things that
we're doing to specifically address some of the online scam
operations and these transnational criminal organizations.
One, in Thailand, we're investing by assisting
investigators to better utilize technology, so that they can
actually hold perpetrators accountable. But, also to help with
regional cooperation.
In Laos, we are providing services for victims who are
repatriated, who have come back from these online scam
operations. And, specifically training immigration officials in
Laos to try to prevent victims from going and falling prey to
these operations.
Another regional effort that we are doing, is focused on
the Southeast Asia region, and it is focused on creating
coordination and cooperation between criminal justice
professionals so that better identification and referral of
victims.
And then, the last thing, which is something that I was so
happy to hear Mr. Tower mention it, we know that if the
traffickers are using social media platforms and online digital
technology, then so should we.
And so, we have a program specifically to raise awareness
on social media platforms that the traffickers are using to
fraudulently recruit, to put correct information out there, to
flag fraudulent ads, to try to use the sources that the
traffickers are using themselves.
Because, you're so right, sir, it's going to take all of us
working together on this issue.
Mr. Moylan. I appreciate that. And, Mr. Tower, she just
handed it over to you. But, I have a specific question for you
by the way.
So, more likely than not, that we have our national
instability directly leads to an increase in domestic and
transnational crime. In relations to Myanmar, Mr. Tower, what
does the current situation mean for border nations like China,
as well as the Indo-Pacific at large, for human trafficking and
other illicit smuggling?
Mr. Tower. Thank you for the question. I think, it's
important to recognize that the February 1, 2021, military coup
perpetrated by the Myanmar Army has been a key factor in
enabling a lot of this rise in criminal activity that you're
seeing in Myanmar. But, also really reverberating across the
region.
You saw where before the coup the democratically elected
government, the NLD, was on a trajectory to really crack down
on some of this criminal activity. So, many of the casino
cities, which were the precursors to the scam compounds that
now line Myanmar borders, they were under significant pressure
from the democratically elected government.
And, the NLD government also had called out the role that
Chinese criminal groups were playing, you know, trying to
advance some of these large-scale criminal enclaves as a part
of China's Belt and Road Initiative.
So, they actually pushed back. By August 2020, you saw
where the PRC actually openly dissociated the BRI from some of
this criminal activity in response to the NLD's efforts.
Following the coup, all of that really was undone. And,
you've seen where in Myanmar, these casino cities have turned
into some of the largest places in the region where you have
really criminal actors perpetrating these online scams, using
forced labor in impunity.
The China border was completely lined with these scam
syndicates. The Thai border, you've seen where they continue to
grow because of the conditions following the coup where the
Myanmar military has deployed the country's police to, you
know, coerce the Myanmar people.
It's really focused all of the country's resources on
fighting a war against the population. And so, that has played
to the advantage of the criminal groups in that country.
And, in fact, the only way in which you've seen a crack
down on some of this criminal activity, is when, in the
northern part of the country, some of the ethnic armed
organizations actually decided to launch an armed operation,
referred to as Operation 1027.
This happened up on the China border in October of last
year. These ethnic armed organizations claim they have two
goals. One was to eradicate scam centers and the other was to
eradicate the Myanmar military dictatorship.
And, they managed to disrupt roughly 300 of these scam
centers in northern Myanmar. Unfortunately, most of the
kingpins got away and relocated to the Myanmar-Thai border or
pivoted to Cambodia or pivoted to Laos.
And, I think, that that illustrates both the challenges of
dealing with these issues in Myanmar under the current
conditions that have been created by the Myanmar military, as
well as the ability of these criminal actors to pivot between
different countries.
So, if you have these sort of bilateral types of
crackdowns, or you have a crackdown that really only touches on
compounds in one particular part of the region, they're going
to end up relocating to other areas.
Mr. Moylan. I appreciate that. Just a final question for
Ms. Dyer. So, for my District of Guam, our proximity to
countries with higher numbers of human trafficking cases
represents a hidden threat.
And, with an increase in fentanyl, which we have a big
increase on Guam, and illegal entries to the U.S. territories
and bases in the Pacific, these TCOs' influence is just bound
to follow.
So, Ms. Dyer, what programs are in place to mitigate
against Pacific TCO influence before they reach the shores of
Guam, U.S.A. and the Northern Mariana Islands of the United
States?
Ms. Dyer. With regard to the PRC influence, I think, that
we have a number of things in place that we are using where the
Department of State participates with the interagency. For
example, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, we have the
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
I think, if your question is pertaining, and there may be
specific resources or support to the Northern Mariana Islands
or to Samoa, that would probably come from the Department of
Justice or the Office for Victims of Crime.
My organization, as far as our programming money, can only
go to countries outside of the U.S. And so, we don't have
programming in your area.
But, we do have programming in nearby areas. For example,
the Philippines that have been really successful. And, we do
have some regional programming that could be of support for you
and your compatriots.
Mr. Moylan. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Tower,
as well. Mr. Chairman, that concludes my questions. Thank you
very much.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Thank you. So good to see you. Just some
final questions. First, starting with China, I currently, and
I've done in the past for years, I chair the congressional-
Executive Chinese Commission. It's bicameral and includes the
executive branch individuals.
It's a very robust, very focused on getting to the bottom
of human rights abuse of all kinds in China. And, we've had
numerous hearings.
And, one of them was recently in October. It was a hearing
on how forced labor on Chinese fishing vessels and in fish
processing facilities taints America's seafood supply chain.
Among our witnesses was Ian Urbina, who was, who has done
some amazing reporting. It was carried by the New Yorker. And,
I'm sure you know and have read his stories, on China's deep
sea fishing fleet and its human trafficking violations.
One of the most shocking things our hearing reviewed, was
the role of the U.S. Government in subsiding China's egregious
labor rights abuses, primarily through procurement by DoD and
also the Department of Agriculture, of tainted seafood.
On U.S. military bases, in Federal prisons, and via the
National School Lunch Program, fish tainted by forced labor is
being bought with U.S. taxpayer dollars. If you ask these
government procurers why they would do that, they point to
price.
There is an exception to the Buy America purchasing policy
if prices are deemed unreasonable. And, sure enough, when we
are competing with seafood caught and processed by slave labor,
you will be underbid every time.
So, in ostensibly comply with quote, the law, our DoD,
USDA, and others violate three laws that I can think of,
Section 301 of the Trade Act, the Uyghur Forced Labor
Prevention Act, and the Countering America's Adversaries
Through Sanctions Act, not to mention the letter, if not the
spirit, of the law, of the Trafficking Victim's Protection Act.
My question to you, and we wrote, I wrote, and I was joined
by Senator Merkley, who is my Co-Chair. I am the Chairman he's
the Co-Chair and we switch every 2 years, with regards to who
is the lead. I'm the lead in this Congress.
And, we jointly did a letter to all the agencies, asking
why aren't you stopping this? Why aren't you applying the law?
And, we've got crickets back and no response of any
meaningful fashion. And, I mean, I'm shocked by it. And, I'm
shocked.
My question is, what can you do with your office,
particularly in those interagency meetings, I mean, our supply
chain should be untainted by, and again, Ian did an amazing job
at great risk to his investigators over the course of several
years.
They had been deployed to these ships who any day might,
they could have been thrown overboard, doing this reporting.
And, they found that the abuse was overwhelming to these, and
it's all forced. They have no choice. And, some of them are
Uyghurs and others are people from North Korea.
Will the President consider signing an Executive Order, for
example, banning the purchase of tainted seafood and applying
U.S. law?
Ms. Dyer. Thank you so much for bringing this up. I find
the plight of fishermen, especially those that are on these
distant water fishing vessels, to be particularly
heartbreaking.
They have, as you know better than anybody, they have often
no access to fresh drinking water. They are subject to
transfers at sea. They spend years and years away from land.
And, it is rife with opportunities for abuse.
I will, I too, am a big fan of the Outlaw Ocean Project.
And, have had the opportunity to speak with Ian Urbina and
learn from his wise counsel.
I'll tell you a few things that the Trafficking in Persons
Office is doing to address the forced labor in the fishing
industry. One is, we do call it out in the Trafficking in
Persons Report.
We call, there are several countries that we are
specifically not only identifying where it is occurring, but
also making specific recommendations. For example, sometimes we
are specifically recommending that countries do not allow
transfers at sea that make those individuals come back so that
they have an opportunity to seek care if they need it.
We are also active participants in the Forced Labor
Enforcement Task Force and in implementing the Uyghur Forced
Labor Prevention Act. As you know, we have put many new
entities on that, the UFLPA Entity List.
And, I am happy to tell you that just earlier, in late
June, we included a seafood processing company specifically
from China, recognizing your excellent point that there is
abuse in the system.
Many of these individuals are, as you said, Uyghurs. I know
that, I believe, Ian Urbina has also pointed out the abuse of
individuals from the DPRK in some of these secret processing
companies as well.
So, we are utilizing the law that Congress gave us. And, we
have seen that it is working. In fact, the UFLPA is causing
countries, they are afraid of being put on that Entity List.
It's enough that I've even recommended when I'm engaging
with multilateral or bilateral folks at the OSCE, I'm saying,
you better do this, because it's working, and you don't want to
be a dumping ground for things that we're not going to take.
We're also, of course, not exclusively using the UFLPA,
also, of course, the withhold release orders. Thank you for
mentioning the Federal Acquisition Regulations, which are
designed to prevent the import of goods made with forced labor.
I know that this has come up in some of our Forced Labor
Enforcement Task Forces. There is now training for individuals
in order to get certified to be an official under the FAR. The
FAR you have to have training on a regular basis about
trafficking in persons.
I also acknowledge that more needs to be done. This is an
area, it is difficult to regulate the open seas. We are really
working on coming up with a concise list of recommendations to
give to countries, the way that we have done like those that
are accepting individuals for the Cuban medical missions.
We need to do a better job. We are certainly calling it
out. But, it is a challenge to regulate the open seas. And, we
are grateful for the tools that Congress has given us and
certainly trying to use all that we have.
Mr. Smith. You know, just on the Uyghur Force Labor Act,
I'm one of the four coauthors of it, totally bipartisan. I've
done a number of oversight hearings and we're finding that we
have flaws in the very bill that we did.
One of them is the de minimus amount of $800, where things
coming out of Xinjiang, everything is under $800. And, it's
not. But, there's no real effective capabilities.
So, we're looking at lowering or getting rid of that very
de minimus standard. Which again, you learn as you write laws.
The other point that I'd like to make, with regards to
fishing, and one of the heros recognized by TIP, has pointed
out amendments to the Thai Fisheries Law. STF issued an open
letter on June 25, just a few weeks ago, and it basically talks
about, it's, you know, they say how they want to work with the
Thai government, but they also want to be very clear, because
some of the recommendations that are coming forward by the Thai
government look like they're going to be counter to protecting
workers' rights.
Allowing for the return of at-sea transhipments of catch
and at-sea crew transfers. Allowing children under the age of
18 to work on these ships, and there's a whole list. I'm sure
you're familiar with it.
But, I'm wondering, you know, what the response might have
been from the Thai government on this, especially since when
the TIP stars brought this out and has spoken about it so
strongly.
Ms. Dyer. I had an opportunity to meet that hero when I was
traveling this past September. And, the woman I met was just
truly inspiring.
I think that I am tracking with your question. We know that
Thailand had actually put into place some of the strict, some
more strict laws as the result of sort of outrage and scrutiny
that they had.
We understand that they are concerned that their laws are
stricter and therefore, they are, it's impeding their business.
And, so, we understand from our NGO colleagues and CSO
colleagues that there is a consideration of rolling back some
of the restrictions that they had put into place.
I can, ironically I actually met with the new U.S., the new
Ambassador from Thailand to the U.S. and brought up this very
issue in our bilateral engagements and just flagged it for him.
Because I know that it is of top of mind for our civil society
organizations and certainly something.
These types of changes and laws are certainly things that
we track and comment on in the Trafficking in Persons Report as
well.
Mr. Smith. Where is the Administration on the sex worker?
You know, when the woman who heads up the United Nations
Special Rapporteur on violence against women makes such a
strong statement, which I completely agree with, prostitution
results in grave and multiple human rights violations such as
torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and it violates the
right of safety, dignity, and privacy, the highest standards of
health, freedom of movement, and family.
And, she talks about that artificial distinction. And, I
have been talking about this ever since we did the original
TVPA back in the 1990's. You know, the line of demarcation
between someone who voluntarily is doing this versus a woman
who is forced through coercion or has not attained the age of
18, that's simple, that's based on age.
But, the other is often absolutely blurred. And, she makes
that very point in her statement. And, she says that terms like
sex work sanitize the harmful reality of prostitution.
What say you?
Ms. Dyer. Like you, I am aware that there are some hard
felt feelings on both sides of the use of that term. As far as
the United States and in my office, we do not use it.
It is not found in our Trafficking in Persons Report. I
will point to one of the things that I read when I first had
the opportunity to come on, was the Advisory Council's Annual
Report from, I think, 2020, where it gave a discussion about
terms and which terms survivors preferred to use.
And, they also gave a really thoughtful discussion about
why. I try to abide by the wise counsel of survivors. And, so,
we have done that here.
Of course, additionally, in the United States, we have in
place, National Security Directive 22, which is still in place.
Which says that the U.S. Government opposes prostitution.
That it is not a legitimate form of work. And, it is
inherently harmful and dehumanizing and contributes to
trafficking in persons. That's the USG National Security
Directive.
You and I both know that a lot of these laws are done at
the local, at the State level. They're, you know, as far as
prostitution laws or terms that they use, some of it is done at
the State level.
But, that's the position from the U.S. Government.
Mr. Smith. Could you just, and Belgium's decriminalization,
what impact, if any, did that have on their Tier rating?
Ms. Dyer. Belgium passed that law outside of the reporting
period. That law passed on May 24. Our reporting period ended
on March 31.
And so, that law and any impact that that law may have,
would be assessed in next year's report, because it falls
within that reporting period.
Mr. Smith. Thank you for that. And, please assess it very
vigorously. I mean, I--when the World Cup was in Germany, I did
a series of hearings about prostitution where it is legalized
in Germany.
And frankly, I was shocked how again, that line of
demarcation between a voluntary so called, and I have to say
so-called prostitute, because there's no such thing in my
opinion, certainly not at underage, they don't exist.
It is a form of sex trafficking, an egregious form. And,
the justifications that came from the German government were
outrageous in my opinion.
And, I actually had women, when we were trying to get the
TVPA passed, go way back, I had met a number of women in St.
Petersburg, Russia with my wife. I brought a resolution up at
the OSCE PA, you know, in 1989 this was.
So, we were with all these women who had been trafficked
and Myriad had rescued them and helped them, an NGO. And, they
even went to Germany. And, they told their stories. And, I was,
through tears they told their stories.
When we were having trouble with our legislation, two of
them came here and told their stories before one of my, before
my Committee. You could have heard a pin drop.
So, anyone who has this fanciful, foolish view that somehow
that is some kind of liberation, it is anything but. It is the
polar opposite.
And, those women made it very clear. So, please be very
vigorous in looking at Belgium during this next reporting
period.
And, Mr. Tower, thank you for your testimony. Sorry that I
haven't had a whole lot of questions for you. But, you're doing
a great job.
What is China's complicity in the scam situation? If you
could speak to that.
Mr. Tower. Yes. So, there are several different factors at
play here. One is that the infrastructure where all of these
scams are taking place inside of was built by Chinese state-
owned companies.
You've seen where over the past two decades, many of these
transnational criminal groups, they've actually built very
close relationships with many elements of the Chinese State.
This includes with Chinese state-owned enterprises. And, I can
cite many examples of this.
But, there are, just to pick one, in the Myanmar-Thai
border, starting from 2017, you had a Chinese crime group that
was headed by a wanted criminal from China that was openly
associating with China's Belt and Road Initiative. And, that
gave a $350 million contract to a Chinese state-owned
enterprise.
And, that is, that infrastructure that was built between
2017 into 2019, is now one of the largest scam centers in the
region. There are tens of thousands of people inside of this
particular scam center.
It is similar across the region where many of these
criminal actors, they masqueraded under China's BRI. They built
close relationships with Chinese state-owned enterprises.
In some cases, they even built relationships with Chinese
planning bodies and with think tanks under those planning
bodies who designed high level plans for projects that even
under China's own law are illegal. It's illegal for Chinese
companies under Chinese laws to invest in casino cities
overseas, for example.
And yet, that was happening with Chinese state-owned
enterprises providing the infrastructure for it. And, with some
of these planning bodies in China playing a direct role in and
enabling all of this criminal activity.
So, in many ways what you saw happen is that China created
a Frankenstein monster. It's empowered many of these criminal
actors. It openly collaborated with them.
And, it enabled them to build this web of influence across
the region, such that the criminal actors now have been able to
begin, you know, even stealing money from across China.
In addition to the U.S. now being one of the main targets,
or largest countries targeted by scammers, you had many people
from across China also targeted by the same scams.
This continues today with many of the criminal kingpins
that are behind these various networks operating scam centers
in Southeast Asia. But then, also openly, you know, putting
information about those scam centers onto platforms like Tik
Tok.
And, here I would highlight the example of Wan Kuok-koi,
also known as Broken Tooth, who is a convicted Triad leader,
who in 2020 initiated another of the large scam centers in
Myanmar. This individual lives in China. He seems to launder
his funds back into China.
The U.S. Government is actually putt sanctions on this
individual. And yet, he is still openly, you know, he kind of
operates as something of a criminal influencer on Tik Tok. Very
active on that platform.
So, this illustrates another way in which the PRC continues
to enable some of this activity. And then, last, you see where
the Chinese law enforcement approach to this, the crack down on
this, it's targeting only scammers who scam in China.
And, this creates incentives where the scam syndicates are
targeting Chinese nationals less and they're pivoting to target
others around the world, which is harmful for the U.S. It's
harmful for the rest of the globe. And, this is another, I
think, way in which China's approach to this is causing harm to
other countries.
Mr. Smith. And, as there are just the two things final.
Going back for decades and then most recently, I've chaired
hearings on people who investigate on behalf of a company in
China, their workplace operations to determine whether or not,
it may not be ILO standards, but whether or not abuse is
occurring, whether or not arrearages are occurring in terms of
paying salaries, workplace occupational hazards and the like.
And, it turns out that much of it is a big fat scam. These
people go in, they talk to someone, hey, you over there, you
over there, tell me, how's it going?
You think they're going to talk, again, with management
which could be very illogical, which probably is PRA, you know,
Chinese Communist Party directed. They're not going to be
forthcoming because there's no job protection with that. That
investigator walks out.
So, we did hearings on it. I did 1 years ago. We looked at
Apple and some of these other companies. And, it's one big fat
scam.
And, I just can't believe that's not being discussed more.
And, I would encourage you, because that's a form of human
trafficking of a very high order.
When all of these products are being made, so many, not
all, coming into our shores and they're being done at slave
labor type situations. And, these auditors sit there and go,
OK, OK.
And, I've read several auditors' reports, and frankly I was
shocked at how, you know, when I asked questions about it and
then we had the hearing on it just recently.
So, please take a good strong look at that, especially with
regards to the PRC. Any new sanctions coming toward China?
Because it's sanctions time now. We got the report on that.
Ms. Dyer. I'm glad you asked about sanctions. As a former
prosecutor, I love a powerful accountability tool. And, we know
that this is a powerful tool to promote both human rights and
accountability.
I will tell you that we are looking to support its use
where appropriate. We even have now on staff, in the
Trafficking in Persons Office a Senior Sanctions Policy
Advisor, who is looking at various authorities to target
individuals and entities.
Currently, that individual has identified and is examining
several priority sectors to potentially use this authorization.
I will look forward to giving you more information.
Mr. Smith. Who is that?
Ms. Dyer. We have, it's a Senior----
Mr. Smith. No, but who is it?
Ms. Dyer. Oh, his name is John Smith.
Mr. Smith. I'd love to meet with him and talk with him.
Ms. Dyer. Yes. He is so smart.
Mr. Smith. That would be great, yes.
Ms. Dyer. You would love to meet with him. He is so smart.
We are really working aggressively on this. Have identified
several priority sectors and would be happy to give you further
information in a different setting at a later time.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. And, the Trafficking Report, for
decades it has been printed in a very presentable fashion. I
give it out to every delegation I meet with. I encourage my
colleagues to do the same.
As Special Representative to the Overseas Parliamentary
Assembly, I bring hundreds of copies when I go and hand them
out. And, it not just singles out the country of the
participant you're talking to, you're from Germany, you're in
here too, so are we.
But, it gives them an idea of just the scope and breadth of
the work that's being done here. That there is an
accountability factor.
When it's just online or in a much more truncated version
like this one, I mean, the other one is four times thicker with
lots of very good narrative and information. I encourage you to
please go back to the other format.
You know, cost maybe something. Please tell us exactly what
it is. We'll try to get the appropriators to put it in a line
item if that is necessary.
But, it is a very useful tool, you know. People don't
necessarily go online. I do for this, because it's not sitting
in a book the way it used to be. But, it's a great source.
And, again, when somebody is talking to somebody and says
look, even when Thailand was very upset with Myanmar, not with
Myanmar, with Burma, no, not Burma. It will come. Because on
the fishing industry they were getting a very, Thailand a bad
mark. And, the other wasn't.
They were getting red-carded by the European Union for all
of this. And, but it was for one reason, geopolitical. Again,
it was because of the Trade Partnership Agreement. And, you
can't be on the list if you, and Malaysia is who I'm talking
about, and it was just very discouraging.
So, what did they do? They looked through the book. Yes,
they could do it online too. But, they're, you know, going back
and forth. Please, go back to printing it.
Do I hear a yes?
Ms. Dyer. I hate making decisions that you don't like, sir.
As I--I think that as part of the Department's modernization
efforts, as well as just the trend across government that has
been going on since 2011, there was an Executive Order that
told us, print less and presume it's all going to be online.
As you said, we experimented last year with, the last year
that was fully printed was 2022. That had the one that you
liked, with all of the country narratives.
We experimented last year with just printing the
introduction. And, we still suffered with significant delays in
the printing. And, it is partially the cost.
Mr. Smith. Get a new printer.
Ms. Dyer. It is, you know, the length and the delays made
it super frustrating for us. And, right now, we stand out as an
outlier, we are the only congressionally mandated report that
the State Department still has done in a print form.
And, in truth, I know that you use it, truly use it and
like it. And, I think, a lot of people certainly do. But, the
demand just isn't there for printed reports as it used to be.
People don't want to have a heavy book that they have to take
on the plane when it's available online.
And, we are trying to make the online version more
accessible. It's searchable. We'll have a pdf up there so you
can search Cuban export or whatever it is that you're
interested in.
And so, we are trying to, while taking away something that
I know that you love, hoping to replace it with something that
you will come to love. And, I appreciate----
Mr. Smith. Use of this available now, is it?
Ms. Dyer. It will be if it's not already. It takes a little
longer to get it formatted. And so, if it's not up yet, it will
be.
Thank you, sir.
Mr. Smith. Anything else you want to add before we conclude
the hearing? Oh, sanctions. Do sanctions.
Ms. Dyer. I shared with you the information about the
sanctions that I have.
Mr. Smith. You did. Yes, I meant the others.
Ms. Dyer. Oh, so sorry.
Mr. Smith. I didn't look at you and talk to them. You think
we should do it with sanctions that need to be changed?
Especially with the Treasury Department.
Mr. Tower. I think one thing that I've observed is that if
you go back to December of last year, there was an announcement
made to have some coordinated sanctions that involved the U.S.,
the U.K., and Canada, targeting some of the perpetrators that
were behind the forced labor scamming across Southeast Asia.
The U.K. actually did place sanctions on the
representatives of some of these Chinese origin crime groups,
as well as representatives of the Myanmar Army's Border Guard
Force, as well as some of the other elites across Southeast
Asia, including in Cambodia that are responsible for the forced
labor scam syndicates.
I think, you have not yet seen sanctions put out in quite
the same way by the U.S. Although, I would note that there were
some of the same individuals that are involved that are
targeted by earlier sanctions for other crimes.
So, for example, in Laos, Zhao Wei has been sanctioned by
the U.S., right. I mentioned earlier the sanctions on Broken
Tooth is another key Chinese criminal involved in this.
But, there are many additional targets, I think, that are
there. That, you know, for example now that the U.K. has
targeted, including some of these individuals deeply involved
in Myanmar and in Cambodia and other parts of the region, as
well as many of the Chinese criminals and other enablers behind
these crimes.
So, it would seem that sanctions could be one tool, whereby
which additional pressure could be placed on some of those
involved in perpetrating the crimes and which could also
potentially be done in coordination with allies and partners.
This could really, I think, put more pressure on this broader
criminal industry that is increasingly causing so much harm
around the globe.
Mr. Smith. Okay. Well, again, thank you both. And, the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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