Barely a ripple

On?October 5, a charge sheet filed in a Bengaluru court named 6 suspects believed to be involved in an organised trafficking ring across the India-Sri Lanka maritime border. The ring was uncovered after police arrested 38 Sri Lankans who had entered India illegally. Subsequent investigations found that they had all fallen victim to traffickers. Each of them had paid between Rs. 3.5 million and 10 million for the chance to enter Canada by ship. Instead, they were confined in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and cut off from family members. The news story talking about the trafficking ring added that though 6 Indians were charged, they had been working with Sri Lankans. On October 12,?65 people?including a 4 year old child were arrested in Trincomalee, as the police had discovered they were planning to migrate illegally. While there is no indication that the arrests are connected, these news stories, which barely made a ripple in news headlines reveal that Sri Lanka continues to struggle to crack down on human trafficking.

The first internationally agreed definition of trafficking could be found in the Palermo Protocol, adopted in 2000, which?defines?trafficking as:?

Source?

The exploitation could include sexual exploitation, forced labour, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.

Migration and trafficking

However as Amirthalingam and Jayatilaka?write, trafficking is less often about the flat-out duping and kidnapping of na?ve victims, than it is about the coercion and exploitation of people who initially entered a particular form of service voluntarily or migrated willingly

In this sense, an early example of trafficking could arguably involve the Malayaigha Tamil community, many of whom faced caste discrimination in South India, and were told that Sri Lanka would offer them a better life full of riches. As Muthu Thevaney?told?Amalini in 2017 (she was 104 years old then):

?‘We were told that, hidden in the tea bushes, we would find coconut and dry fish, all the riches we could earn money from.’

In the?1930s, the Malaiyagha Tamils were excluded from claiming citizenship through the Donoughmore Constitution of Ceylon, and the Ceylon Citizenship Act in 1948 and an amendment to the Ceylon Parliamentary Elections Act in 1949?disqualified?Malaiyagha Tamils from citizenship and prevented them from voting in elections. Subsequent legal reforms rendered the community stateless, and many were?forcibly?repatriated in the 1970s. Like the 38 Sri Lankans found in Tamil Nadu, they searched for a better life but ultimately, did not find their circumstances had improved as they had been promised. Upon arriving, many?chose?to stay on despite the difficulty of the work involved - which speaks volumes about the caste-based discrimination they faced in India.?

The Malaiyagha Tamil community?highlights how sometimes, the issue of trafficking can be intertwined with migration, even though they are distinct phenomena.?

There were several?‘waves’?of migration from Sri Lanka beginning just after Independence, when the Burgher community began migrating, being uncertain about the transition from colonial to local rule (particularly as they had held positions of power during the colonial era). This flow of migration was renewed after?1956, when S W R D Bandaranaike passed the Sinhala Only Act, leading to many from the Tamil and Burgher communities to lose their posts in public administration due to not speaking Sinhalese. A major reason for migration continues to be for?economic opportunity?or due to poverty.??Abuse?by a spouse or from within families can also lead people to migrate to escape their circumstances.?Wars and conflict?can be another ‘push’ factor. Sri Lanka saw waves of migration due to riots,?particularly from the Tamil community in the 1970s and 1980s?- in more recent years,?Muslims and Christians?have also been migrating due to discrimination from Buddhist extremists. At times, this migration has been illegal and sometimes involves collusion of security personnel, including the Navy, as the recent apprehension of ‘Navy Kamal’ - so called because he was a member of Navy Intelligence from 2003 to 2015 -?highlights. As part of his work, Navy Kamal?reportedly?had both knowledge about human smuggling and links with smugglers, allowing him to arrange illegal and unsafe passage for people desperate to flee their circumstances.?

Trafficking and domestic work

?Over time, migration changed in pattern - by the 1990s, as many women as men were?leaving?to seek work overseas, which led to different vulnerabilities.?Data?from the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment shows that women were more vulnerable to being trafficked than men - for instance, more women reported physical and sexual harassment, not being sent back home after the completion of their contract, non payment of wages, or other breaches of contract in 2011.?

?For a time, newspaper headlines were filled with stories of?miscarriages of justice?and?abuse. Even in 2020, there were?reports?of women migrant workers experiencing sexual harassment, or not being able to access their own passports, leaving them stranded. While these patterns emerged in the data, the state response to them was revealing. The government began attributing?social costs?to women who chose to migrate for work, claiming that the health, nutrition and security of the children left behind was being affected. This was not?backed?by evidence-based research, but rather appeared to be reflective of traditional views on gender roles, particularly the role of the mother as caregiver, which persisted among government officials such as grama niladharis.?

The imposition of the family background report on domestic workers perhaps revealed certain biases, specifically that domestic work was not skilled labour. This has been?explicitly spelled out?in policy - Sri Lanka’s 2008 National Labour Migration Policy spoke of the state’s vision to increase skilled migration and reduce “the outflow of low-skilled workers (including women workers who are employed as housemaids)”. The policy also spoke of domestic workers not fully understanding the significance of the decision to work overseas, and the impact it might have on themselves and their families. Studies looking at push factors for migrant workers also uncritically repeat similar views about those with a desire to migrate, particularly women. (see?this?study which includes ‘lack of education’ and ‘low skill level’ as push factors for migration, implying that their decision to migrate is flippant and not based on studying the risks). It’s clear that the state often did not afford autonomy to those who were looking for work deemed low skill.

Jayawardana?writes?that sending countries (those who largely send people overseas for work) often don’t collect data on migrant workers who leave because they are perceived as being disloyal to the state. Perhaps this too is why, upon seeing stories of abuse, the government chose to introduce punitive measures towards women going overseas for work, and specifically, female domestic workers.?

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