Human trafficking law remains a dead letter, says Akel deputy

The 2019 law to prosecute customers of human trafficking victims was not being implemented said the president of the House human rights committee, Irini Charalambidou on Monday.

“Trafficking of human beings is a form of slavery that violates fundamental human rights,” she said, adding that a law revised in 2019 making it easier to prosecute customers of human trafficking victims was not being utilised.

The committee discussed the weaknesses of state services in dealing with human trafficking, after Cyprus was downgraded in the 2021 US State Department’s report, following three years in the top tier.

The State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report downgraded Cyprus from Tier 1 to Tier 2, mainly because there had not been any trafficking convictions, despite a number of prosecutions, for the past four years.

Representatives of all competent services were invited to Monday’s meeting as the committee looked for ways to tighten the laws

Akel deputy Charalambidou, said after the meeting there was a serious problem in handling such situations, a point also made in the reports of the Council of Europe’s Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (Greta) and of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). She said the committee had asked police for suggestions for changes.

“It is a law that remained on paper. To prosecute the customers, political will is needed and required,” Charalambidou said.

She added that one could not expect from victims to file complaints as they were people whose travel documents were held by their traffickers and lived under a state of terror.

Charalambidou also asked why cases on prostitution were tried in district courts and not in criminal courts based on the law on human trafficking, which was much stricter.

Disy deputy and former head of the police unit for combating human trafficking, Rita Superman, said efforts had to be stepped up to implement the existing mechanisms such as the national action plan protecting victims.

“Unfortunately, our country is a country of destination, of transit and hosts both traffickers and victims,” she said.

The Greens’ deputy Alexandra Attalides said the use of sexual services by anyone should be criminalised, while the courts should try these cases quickly, and the state ought to help the victims by providing them with psychological, legal and financial support.

Attalides also said that in 2015, during the great migration crisis, 55,000 women and girls were lost and most likely fell victim to human trafficking. “That is why the asylum service, together with all the other services that deal with trafficking, should be able to identify among asylum seekers victims of trafficking and offer them the special approach and support they need,” she said.

In July, three Bulgarian nationals, a woman and two men, were found guilty of trafficking people whom they forced to beg for money. It was the first such conviction, with one of guilty sentenced to prison for two year  and the other two for 20 months.