Human Trafficking - What are we doing to spot it ?
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: July 04, 2012 -

Exposed to unprecedented vulnerabilities; young people in Manipur are increasingly becoming victims of human trafficking not only within India but also abroad.

A cursory look at some of the media reports over the last few years would suffice how the multi-million dollar organised crime has taken firm root on the soil of this strife-torn underdeveloped state.

In 2009, 97 children, who were trafficked from Manipur on the pretext of providing better education facilities were rescued from different parts of the country.

In 2010, as many as 139 trafficked children from Manipur were rescued from various illegal children's homes in Chennai and Bangalore.

In 2011, out of 60 children trafficked from North East region to different unrecognised children homes of the country, 30 of them came from Tousem sub-division of Tamenglong district.

In later part of the same year, the Social Service Branch of Mumbai police raided a bungalow at Oshiwara, where a prostitution racket was being run in the guise of a massage parlour and ten Manipuri girls were rescued.

In between, there were cases where Nagaland police rescued five Manipuri girls, who were being lured to Singapore with job offers from Chumukedima check post near Dimapur and another five Manipuri girls being rescued from a Malaysian nightclub after they were taken to Singapore with promise of better job prospects.

On their return, these five girls also revealed that there are more than 100 girls from Manipur in Malaysia and Singapore, who too were lured by human traffickers with similar promise of better job.

Now the latest bombshell has come in the form of the revelation that out of the total 179 girls trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation into Goa and rescued by Goa police in the last three years, Manipur records the second highest number of victims after Mumbai.

It also indicates that Manipur figure is the highest among the North Eastern states.

Now the question is - why young people in Manipur are increasingly becoming soft target for human traffickers and what we are doing to stop this menace?

How sincere are we in our efforts to combat the challenges posed by the problem of human trafficking?

We need to find answers to these questions, especially in the light of the fact that none of the state government officials of the related department felt it necessary to participate in an important consultation programme on the issue held at Goa from June 26 to 27 despite being invited. The same goes for the numerous NGOs working in the field.

With exception to two, rest of the NGOs in Manipur did not deem it fit to a part of the effort being made to combat this trade in human misery.

Human trafficking is a serious issue that needs to be tackled through collective efforts among the service providers of the destination state and the source states.

It also calls for a strong political will to end the problem.

The state government is learnt to have taken up steps to set up anti-trafficking police units to check trafficking of young people outside Manipur on the pretext of free education.

It had also reportedly initiated steps to set up anti-human trafficking cells in districts where large cases of human trafficking cases have come.

Are these measures enough and how effective they have been in checking human trafficking?

The answer may not be far to seek when we look at the steady rise in the number of trafficking cases of late despite such measures supposedly in place.

Would it be too much to ask, if we expect the state government and NGOs to remain on their toes and not wait for media report to act.