{"id":12032,"date":"2024-12-05T05:56:14","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T16:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12032"},"modified":"2024-12-05T05:56:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T16:56:14","slug":"death-threats-made-to-stop-migrants-reporting-trafficking-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=12032","title":{"rendered":"Death threats made to stop migrants reporting trafficking – union"},"content":{"rendered":"

Migrants and their families are being threatened with death or injury if they complain to authorities that they have been trafficked, says First Union.<\/p>\n

Twelve people have come forward so far, and more were in getting in contact all the time, according to union general secretary Dennis Maga.<\/p>\n

The trafficking – from the Philippines to New Zealand – that the migrants had suffered was a “complete deception”, he said.<\/p>\n

“They’ve been made to believe that there are some jobs waiting for them. And they’ve been forced to pay an amount of money even though for example, in the Philippines there should be no placement fee. And then they’ve been told that they should not be disclosing that information to anyone once they arrive in New Zealand – if they do, there is also a death threat against them.”<\/p>\n

The threats were serious enough to scare them off reporting the trafficking to authorities.<\/p>\n

“Their family back home is being threatened, that’s our understanding. Not only the family, there’s also a threat that if they go back home, just at the airport, they could be killed from there.”<\/p>\n

He said migrants from other Asian countries were also being deceived into coming to New Zealand, paying thousands of dollars for work, and finding no job exists.<\/p>\n

“We are unearthing a lot of cases right now of a combination of migrant exploitation and elements of human trafficking,” said Maga. “I think some of these rogue employers became more sophisticated in the way they operate. So for example, in the cases that we’re dealing with, they’ve been promised a lot of work and if [migrants] pay an amount of money -between $10,000 and $20,000 – they’ll be able to get a proper job in New Zealand and they’ll be working in different kinds of industry.<\/p>\n

“But once they arrive, it’s a different work arrangement for them. To the point that some of them are really desperate now and some of them have suicidal tendency because they sold their assets back home – and they thought that the jobs that had been promised to them was the job that they signed from their country of origin.”<\/p>\n

\"First<\/p>\n

First Union general secretary Dennis Maga says the threats are serious enough to scare people off reporting the trafficking to authorities.\u00a0<\/span>Photo:\u00a0RNZ \/ Jordan Dunn<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He said trafficking was more serious than exploitation because of the coercion and deception involved, and the threats they now faced to stay quiet.<\/p>\n

“We’re still convincing these individuals to come forward and and file a formal complaint. And the problem is that unions cannot really assure people’s safety back home, we can only assist them when they are in the country.”<\/p>\n

Many had sold their assets back home to pay for the role, and they were now desperate, and some were suicidal, said Maga.<\/p>\n

He said some of the operators are recruiters overseas and know they are out of reach of New Zealand prosecution. Some New Zealand employers were complicit.<\/p>\n

“These rogue employers are now sophisticated in the way they operate, so it’s going to be hard for us to simply find out their wrongdoings if we focus on in New Zealand. We need to investigate the supply chain. We need actually to find out those countries where they are sending these people [from].”<\/p>\n

He hoped the government will investigate the individual trafficking cases, but also take action on legislation to deal with modern slavery, which has already been adopted in many migrant destination countries. It allows regulators and prosecutors to hold employers responsible for migrant labour hire in their business and subcontractors.<\/p>\n

“I think in the absence of legislation like modern slavery, it’s going to be hard for us to stamp out this problem.”<\/p>\n

Employers – or at least ones not complicit in the trafficking or exploitation – could also act by ensuring their own recruitment practices were not flawed, he said.<\/p>\n

rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Migrants and their families are being threatened with death or injury if they complain to authorities that they have been trafficked, says First Union. Twelve people have come forward so far, and more were in getting in contact all the time, according to union general secretary Dennis Maga. The trafficking – from the Philippines to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12032"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12032\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12034,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12032\/revisions\/12034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}