Category Archives: Transhuman News

Police have said they believe human trafficking syndicates are behind the series of murders in mainland Penang.

This was what I was alluding to in my blog post in August 2014: Bukit Mertajam in the spotlight for the wrong reasons. The news about human trafficking syndicates operating here had emerged in January 2014.

Penang police said yesterday:

Polis Sedang mengesan empat lelaki warga Myanmar yang dipercayai terlibat dalam kejadian culik dan bunuh membabitkan rakan senegara mereka pada selasa lalu.

YDH. Ketua Polis Daerah Timur Laut, ACP Mior Faridalathrash bin Wahid berkata identiti empat lelaki berusia 30-an itu telah dikenal pasti dan mereka dipercayai masih berada di Pulau Pinang dan Kedah.

Empat lelaki termasuk perancang utama dalam kes culik dan bunuh itu telah dikenal pasti dan siasatan kami juga mendapati mereka adalah anggota sindiket pemerdagangan manusia. Polis percaya dengan beberapa maklumat dan perkembangan baru yang diperolehi kami mampu mengesan mereka ( empat lelaki Myanmar itu ) dan menyelesaikan kes berkenaan.

The latest body to be found was on Tuesday morning and police are probing whether this case is linked to a human trafficking operation in Kedah.

The United States had downgraded Malaysia and three other countries to Tier 3 the lowest possible ranking in its annual Trafficking of Persons (TIP) Report due to insufficient action taken to prevent human trafficking and forced labour.

We are in the same group as Zimbabwe, North Korea and Saudi Arabia! See this Guardian report: US penalises Malaysia for shameful human trafficking record.

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Human trafficking syndicates believed to be behind grisly mainland Penang murders

Human trafficking expert Ken Lawson, of the Columbus Division of Police, gives a lecture on the subject during a seminar held at Pat OBrien Chevrolet in Medina on Friday morning. (ANDREW DAVIS / GAZETTE)

Caseworkers, law enforcement, elected officials and interested residents from across Northeast Ohio gathered Friday in Medina to discuss a widely misunderstood criminal industry: human trafficking.

Mead Wilkins, director of Medina County Job and Family Services, said the seminar is a crucial way to educate caseworkers and court workers on the law and how to recognize human trafficking.

In Medina, the nonprofit Child Advocacy Center deals with child welfare issues. Many times through their work with sexual assault victims, they find a new layer to the story.

This is such a natural gateway to finding exploited children, he said. It is happening here. There are children in Medina County who are being sexually exploited and it happens more often than you think.

Wilkins said that anyone suspects human trafficking should contact Job and Family Services or the Sheriffs Office.

Part of it is if you are not aware of it, you are not going to see it, he said.

The seminar, held at Pat OBrien Chevrolet, featured Ken Lawson, a Columbus police officer and human trafficking expert, as the keynote speaker.

We have to change from seeing these people as criminals to seeing them as victims, he told the crowd of more than 80 people. When we do that, we will be able to provide the atmosphere where they can thrive.

According to Lawson, as late as 2002, law enforcement and health services across the nation were not equipped with knowledge to identify someone who has been the victim of human trafficking. Instead, the person would have been charged with prostitution and most likely released to her abuser.

Read more here:
Law enforcement discusses extent of human trafficking

TOKYO Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean prison camp survivor who has become the symbol of human rights injustices suffered in that country, has changed key parts of the story of his ordeal.

Although the most horrific details, such as being lowered by a hook over a fire, still stand, Shin has admitted that many of the places and timing of events in his telling of his story were wrong, Blaine Harden, the author of Escape from Camp 14, a best-selling book about Shins life, said Saturday.

From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around, said Harden, a former Washington Post journalist who first wrote Shins story for The Post in 2008.

Shin, 32, has been one of the most prominent defectors from North Korea, trying to raise awareness about human rights abuses there. He also testified in front of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, whose report has led to an international campaign to hold the totalitarian states leaders to account for decades of human rights violations.

North Korea, alarmed by this campaign and the prospect of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un being indicted, has been trying to undermine Shins testimony and will doubtless seize on these revisions to try to portray all accounts of human rights abuses as fabrications.

In Escape from Camp 14 and in his testimony to the U.N. commission, Shin has told this story: He was born in Camp 14, a sprawling high-security political prison in the mountains of north of Pyongyang, where he was brutally tortured and lived until his escape in 2005. He has consistently said that he escaped with a fellow inmate, climbing over his body when the man was electrocuted on the fence that surrounded the camp, and then made his way into China.

Shin admitted to Harden on Friday that when he was about 6, he, his mother and his brother were transferred to another prison camp, Camp 18, across the Taedong River from Camp 14.

It was there, after learning of his mother and brothers plans to escape, that he betrayed them to the authorities, Shin told Harden. It was also in this camp, he said, that he witnessed their executions.

In the book, Shin recounted all these events as happening in Camp 14.

Shin also now says that he escaped from the camps on two occasions, in 1999 and 2001. The second time, he made it to China but was caught after four months by local police and sent back to North Korea. He was first held at Camp 18, then transferred back to the more draconian Camp 14, Shin told Harden.

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Prominent N. Korean defector Shin Dong-hyuk admits parts of story are inaccurate