THE death of 39 Vietnamese migrants discovered in Britain on Oct 23 cast new light on human trafficking. The United Nations estimates that 40 million men, women and children have been forced into bonded labour, child marriages and prostitution. The Malaysian Bar Council reports that there are roughly five million undocumented migrants in Malaysia.
It is hard to imagine that freedom is elusive to pockets in society as we enter the third decade of the 21st century. The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that human trafficking is now one of the world’s most lucrative organised crimes, generating more than US$150bil (RM621.1bil) a year with two-thirds of its victims, or 25 million people, coming from East Asia and the Pacific.
