A House foreign affairs panel reminded the State Department that it’s still interested in getting to the bottom of how an annual human trafficking report was manipulated to advance the administration’s political objectives.
During a Tuesday hearing focused on last year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) stated that he and six other lawmakers have requested from the department memos detailing why certain countries had their records on anti-trafficking efforts upgraded contrary to facts on the ground. The 2015 TIP report promoted both Cuba and Malaysia from Tier 3 human traffickers to Tier 2, just as both countries had business before the White House.
“A recommendation was made and obviously those split memos would give us real insight form the State Department on why those decisions [were made] and who made those decisions,” Rep. Meadows said in opening remarks.
A Reuters report published last August revealed that the independent agency in charge of preparing the annual TIP report was “overruled by senior American diplomats and pressured into inflating assessments” of more than a dozen “[s]trategically important countries.”
Malaysia’s upgrade came after Congress passed legislation last year requiring Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) to hold at least a Tier 2 designation on the TIP report. Cuba’s improved designation came amid the Obama administration’s diplomatic reset with the Castro government.
Reuters also revealed that China, the largest exporter to the US, maintained its Tier 2 rating in the report, despite recommendations by agency researchers to label it a Tier 3 offender.
The affair has angered members of both parties in both the House and Senate. Following a classified hearing on the matter in September, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) reported that the department was withholding from the panel three specific documents related to the 2015 TIP report. Around the same time, seven House Democrats wrote a letter to the State Department Inspector General, urging an investigation.
There were no government officials on hand to testify at Tuesday’s hearing before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. Instead, it focused on the report’s credibility.
“The TIP report was meant to hold countries accountable for their failures to fight human trafficking—it was meant to speak truth to power,” said the Chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.). “It was meant to speak for the trafficking victims waiting, hoping, and praying for relief.”
“Get the Tiers right in 2016,” he added, in a message to the State Department. “The lives of many of the weakest and the most vulnerable and US credibility hang in the balance.”
