Hastert case shows it’s no time to cave on child sex trafficking

With former Republican House speaker J. Dennis Hastert under indictment over hush money to cover up the alleged sexual abuse of a minor while he was a high school wrestling coach, now is probably not the best time for House Republicans to be weakening proposed laws against sex trafficking of minors.

But that is exactly what the House GOP is apparently preparing to do.

In April, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bipartisan amendment to the Trade Promotion Authority authorization bill that denies “fast track” for any treaty with any country that the State Department says is not fighting the scourge of human slavery. The amendment, offered by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), was approved by a vote of 16-10.

Now that amendment has become a problem for the Obama administration. Malaysia was recently declared by the State Department to be one of the world’s 23 worst offenders in turning a blind eye to slavery and sex trafficking within its borders. Malaysia also happens to be one of the 12 countries in the giant Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that Obama is hoping to approve using new fast-track trade authority.

Awkward.

Every year, the State Department issues a Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which ranks countries on their efforts to combat human slavery and sex trafficking. Countries in Tier 1 are those that “fully comply” with the minimum standards outlined in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, while countries in Tier 3 “do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.” Malaysia is one of those countries.

After Malaysia was granted waivers in 2012 and 2013, the State Department determined that its government had made “limited and inadequate efforts to improve its flawed victim protection regime” and thus downgraded the country to Tier 3 status — placing it alongside Cuba, North Korea and Iran as one of the world’s worst countries for human slavery.

According to the report, Malaysia is a “transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and women and children subjected to sex trafficking.” The report notes that “A significant number of young foreign women are recruited ostensibly for legal work in Malaysian restaurants, hotels, and beauty salons, but are subsequently coerced into the commercial sex trade.” Instead of helping victims, the Malaysian government detains them for months and years, treating them as criminals. And the government identified fewer victims, conducted fewer investigations and reported fewer convictions in 2013 than it had the previous year.

In other words, Malaysia’s record on human slavery is getting worse, not better.

Now House Republicans are scrambling for a way to let Malaysia off the hook, so as not to delay the massive trade deal. House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is reportedly planning to use a low-profile customs enforcement bill to “fix” the anti-slavery provision.

In Washington parlance, “fix” means “gut” to the point that a provision is meaningless.

Under the so-called “fix,” a Tier 3 country can qualify for fast track if the secretary of state submits a waiver to Congress listing the “concrete actions to implement the principal recommendations in the most recent TIP report.” But the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons office has now declared for three years in a row that Malaysia has failed to implement those recommendations and that its performance is deteriorating, not improving. That office is supposed to be an independent body that bucks political pressure. For the secretary of state to now certify that Malaysia is improving would undermine the independence and credibility of the human trafficking office.

Here’s a better idea: Use the original Menendez amendment to pressure Malaysia to improve its record on human trafficking.

Congress recently reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and passed the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act — a bill that President Obama signed into law this weekend. What kind of signal would it send if Congress now let one of the world’s worst offenders off the hook in order to clear the way for a massive trade agreement? Congress should stand with trafficking victims, not cover the tracks of the worst offenders.

But it seems like the fix is in. Even victim advocacy groups such as the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking appear to have been co-opted — their silence is notable. So has Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and even Menendez.

But the “fix” can’t happen without House Republican leadership. Let’s hope that the Hastert scandal makes reform conservatives in the House have second thoughts. Morality in foreign policy should still be a conservative Republican value. And our responsibility to protect the vulnerable does not stop at the water’s edge.

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