Cyprus back on US trafficking Watch List
“This is a good development,” said Father Savvas Michaelides, a Cypriot Orthodox priest who runs a shelter for trafficked women and is an outspoken critic of the government on the issue.
“The government is always trying to deceive foreigners that they are doing something but the real test is how many cabarets are being closed. It is none that I can see. Sometimes the management changes but the clubs continue.
“Politicians like to work up anti-American sentiments on something like this but we have to accept this criticism,” he said.
Doros Polycarpou, a Cypriot human rights activist, said: “I’m glad to see them back on the list because they have done nothing. They created an action plan and then for a year they did nothing.”
Polycarpou has complained previously about a point that the State Department made prominent in its 2006 report on Cyprus. This is the prosecution of club owners for prostitution without ever employing tougher legislation against trafficking.
The Cypriot Council of Ministers in April this year appointed an independent body to investigate widely reported cases of police corruption but failed to investigate reports of trafficking-related corruption, the report said.
“Cyprus has been placed on Tier 2 Watch List because of its failure to show evidence of increasing efforts to address its serious trafficking for sexual exploitation problem,” the report said.
As well as sexual exploitation, it said, “there were credible reports of female domestic workers from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines forced to work excessively long hours and denied proper compensation.”
The State Department has a three-tiered classification system, according to an explanation from the US Embassy in Cyprus. The best position, Tier 1, is given to countries meeting "minimum standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking" set forth in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000.
Tier 2 countries are considered “not fully complying with the minimum standards, but making significant efforts to meet those minimum standards.” These include Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan and Bosnia. Tier 3 countries, which are assessed as neither neither complying with minimum standards nor making significant efforts to do so, include Belize, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Tier 2 Watch List countries are at risk of slipping to Tier 3 “unless serious concerns are addressed.” Cyprus was on the Watch List in 2004 but moved up to normal Tier 2 the following year. Other Watch List countries include Armenia, Israel, Russia and six Gulf states.
“The government is always trying to deceive foreigners that they are doing something but the real test is how many cabarets are being closed. It is none that I can see. Sometimes the management changes but the clubs continue.
“Politicians like to work up anti-American sentiments on something like this but we have to accept this criticism,” he said.
Doros Polycarpou, a Cypriot human rights activist, said: “I’m glad to see them back on the list because they have done nothing. They created an action plan and then for a year they did nothing.”
Polycarpou has complained previously about a point that the State Department made prominent in its 2006 report on Cyprus. This is the prosecution of club owners for prostitution without ever employing tougher legislation against trafficking.
The Cypriot Council of Ministers in April this year appointed an independent body to investigate widely reported cases of police corruption but failed to investigate reports of trafficking-related corruption, the report said.
“Cyprus has been placed on Tier 2 Watch List because of its failure to show evidence of increasing efforts to address its serious trafficking for sexual exploitation problem,” the report said.
As well as sexual exploitation, it said, “there were credible reports of female domestic workers from India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines forced to work excessively long hours and denied proper compensation.”
The State Department has a three-tiered classification system, according to an explanation from the US Embassy in Cyprus. The best position, Tier 1, is given to countries meeting "minimum standards for the elimination of severe forms of trafficking" set forth in the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000.
Tier 2 countries are considered “not fully complying with the minimum standards, but making significant efforts to meet those minimum standards.” These include Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan and Bosnia. Tier 3 countries, which are assessed as neither neither complying with minimum standards nor making significant efforts to do so, include Belize, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
Tier 2 Watch List countries are at risk of slipping to Tier 3 “unless serious concerns are addressed.” Cyprus was on the Watch List in 2004 but moved up to normal Tier 2 the following year. Other Watch List countries include Armenia, Israel, Russia and six Gulf states.
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