The Office of the Secretary for Security released yesterday its “Report on the Work of the Macau Special Administrative Region in preventing Human Trafficking (2019-2023)”, which states that the local police forces transferred one suspected human trafficking case to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) in 2019 and another one in 2022, while prosecutors filed criminal charges in one human trafficking case in 2021. In the respective trial later that year, the court found some of the defendants guilty of human trafficking.
The local government established in 2007 the interdepartmental Human Trafficking Deterrent Measures Concern Committee under the supervision of the Secretary for Security, comprising representatives from the government’s administrative and legal, economic and financial, public security and social and cultural fields. The committee underlines in its report that “in all the cases of human trafficking offences, the committee has acted in coordination with the relevant public entities in accordance with the law to complement the investigations and trial procedures with the judicial authorities, with a view to effectively combating the relevant offences,” adding that since the implementation of the Trafficking in Persons Law in 2008, there has been a “significant” overall downward trend in the number of related offences in Macau, with low or even zero crime rates over the years.
According to the report, between 2019 and 2023, the police forces conducted 1,426 inspections tackling suspected prostitution or human trafficking and 7,640 inspections concerning suspected illegal employment in Macau. During the same period, the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL) conducted a total of 281 large-scale inspections, 544 preventive inspections and 1,081 questionnaire surveys at construction sites across the city, as well as 1,863 inspections at over 140 job-referral agencies.
With the continuous adoption of “effective” preventive and combating measures by the police forces and the enhancement of relevant intelligence gathering, human trafficking offences have been “significantly” curbed in Macau, the report noted, adding that there are no cases of the authorities preferring not to prosecute and convict anyone of human trafficking offences, as alleged in statements released by a several countries, or cases of government officials involved in sex trafficking, adding that there has been no failure in identifying individual victims, nor the involvement in commercial sex of any personnel of the local government stationed abroad.
