7,000 asylum seekers prevented from reaching Malta last year

A US annual report on human trafficking says that 7,000 irregular migrants were prevented from reaching Malta last year due to an agreement between the governments of Malta and Libya.

A memorandum of understanding signed in May 2020 between the two governments helped reduce the number of irregular migrants entering Maltese ports. According to the report, this MoU has helped prevent at least 7,000 irregular migrants from arriving to Malta.

However, approximately 2,300 irregular migrants successfully arrived in Malta in 2020 – a decrease compared to the 3,100 in 2019.

Beyond these figures, there are approximately 9,000 refugees and 4,000 asylum seekers residing in Malta. The report says that these groups are vulnerable to trafficking in Malta’s informal labour market, including within the construction, hospitality and domestic work sectors.

Fraudulent labour recruitment practices continue to occur, the report says. Traffickers replace the originally signed contract with a less favourable one upon arrival in Malta or force victims to perform a completely different job than what was agreed upon. Traffickers also go so far as to confiscate the passports of victims upon arrival.

The US Trafficking in Persons Report flags rule of law, corruption, slow court proceedings and an understaffed police force as factors hampering proper prosecution. It notes that an investigation initiated in 2004 of a former police officer is still ongoing 17 years later, contributing to impunity for the officer and injustice for the victims.

This issue has been flagged multiple times over the years in the same report. The officer allegedly acted as an accomplice to a convicted sex trafficker through the falsification of visa documents and the procurement of a victim.

After a court hearing for the former police officer, originally scheduled for April 2019, was deferred, no further action was taken in the case.

“If guilty of complicity in trafficking, the prolonged court proceedings and lack of a court judgement contributed to impunity for the officer and inhibited justice for victims,” the report reads.

The Criminal Code prescribes penalties of six to 12 years’ imprisonment for sex and labour trafficking. While the US report dubs these penalties to be “sufficiently stringent”, it notes that Malta does not have specialised anti-trafficking prosecutors or courts.

Despite this, the police vice squad initiated 16 trafficking investigations – eight for sex trafficking and eight for labour trafficking. This marked a significant increase compared to the five investigations initiated in 2019 and 10 in 2018.

Prosecutions were initiated against two suspected sex traffickers in 2020, while three other traffickers were convicted in 2020. Two of the convicted traffickers are female Chinese nationals sentenced to five and seven years of imprisonment, respectively. The third trafficker was a Maltese male sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.

One of the two female traffickers had been charged in 2013 with human trafficking, managing a brothel, living off the earnings of prostitution and other related events. The woman, Lin Han, used to run the Honey Girl Beauty Spa in Balzan, which would offer massage services with added sexual favours at an additional premium.

The other two traffickers were both convicted of jointly running brothels under the pretence of massage parlours.

Prosecutions of 16 suspects from prior reporting periods remained ongoing last year, with most suspects having since been released on bail. The Courts re-sentenced two traffickers from an overturned court decision from 2019, subsequently upholding the original conviction but lowering their sentences from 12 to nine years of prison time.

The report acknowledges recent efforts by government to increase police training on trafficking and sexual exploitation. During the 2020 reporting period, government provided anti-trafficking training to officials, which included resources on victim identification and referral. Similar training was provided to border authorities, including civilian border control officers, officials from the Armed Forces of Malta, and Malta Customs officers.

Four police officers were similarly trained in understanding child sexual exploitation, and 35 front-line officials were briefed on trafficking indicators and available services for victims.

Despite this, police and social workers were only able to identify six trafficking victims in 2020. For comparison, identified victims usually number at around 20-30 people.

While the number of victims identified has been falling every year, the low 2020 figure could be down to pandemic-related restrictions making it more difficult for government to identify trafficking victims, as NGOs pointed out in the report.

From the victims identified, five were victims of labour trafficking, including two victims of domestic servitude and three Maltese child victims of forced criminality. The fifth victim was a combination of both sex and labour trafficking.

The foreign trafficking victims were all from the Philippines, and all six victims were female.