Failed drug war tactics won't curb human smugglers

The StarPhoenix

 

While Canadians justifiably have been preoccupied with a system that allowed 490 Sri Lankan Tamils to end up on West Coast after each paying human smugglers tens of thousands of dollars, the truly dark side of this odious industry came to light in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

 

The bullet-riddled bodies of 72 migrants from Central and South America were found there last week, victims of human traffickers who disposed of their suddenly inconvenient human contraband as they might flush a bag of dope rather than get caught.

 

One victim, an Ecuadorian who was shot in the neck but still managed to escape, testified to the group's horrific ordeal. What was remarkable about his tale of murder, extortion and slavery was that, in a world where millions are caught in the same trap, it wasn't remarkable at all.

 

According to Mexico's National Human Rights Commission, in the six-month period that ended in February 2009, almost 10,000 illegal immigrants struggling to make their way through that country from Central and South America had been kidnapped.

 

These migrants, who embark on their dangerous journey despite knowing the risks and odds, are assaulted, raped, thrown off speeding trains, robbed, enslaved, forced to work as drug mules for brutal gangs such as the one that murdered the 72 in Tamaulipas, and held to ransom until their impoverished families can come up with the money to save them.

 

As brutal is their treatment, both the victims and the perpetrators live by an unwritten rule -- rarely will the crimes be reported. If the reports are filed before the victims reach the Rio Grande, chances greater than even that the authorities along the way will take part in the rape and plunder.

 

And if the crimes come to light after the victims make it into the United States, it will result in deportation and the need to do it all over again or die trying.

 

This is a global problem. Bodies of women and children wash up on the shores of Yemen almost daily. Corpses float in off the coast of the Spanish Canary Islands. Overloaded boats capsize and kill their cargo in the Mediterranean.

 

So far the reaction of the developed world has been predictable. This summer, for example, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, struggling in the polls, announced a campaign to expel Roma migrants back to the Eastern European countries from whence they fled poverty and discrimination.

 

Although decried by his European allies and even the Catholic Church that likened the expulsions to the Nazis' transportation of minorities, French voters seem to be rallying behind their beleaguered president.

 

And he isn't the only one to take advantage of the popular desire to rid the developed world of these migrants. The U.S. Justice Department has sued the Arizona government over the state's decision to arbitrarily search out and deport people who can't easily prove they are in the U.S. legally.

 

The New York Times described this week how Border Patrol agents ride the trains south of the Canadian border between Chicago and New York, questioning passengers about their citizenship and hauling away non-citizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers.

 

And a riot broke out this past weekend inside the Darwin immigration detention centre on the Australian-administered Christmas Island after mostly illiterate Indonesian fishermen who had been running immigrants from Sri Lanka, Burma and Central Asia -- supposedly after being tricked by traffickers -- complained they were being held for months without being charged.

 

It's no coincidence that the actions of these developed nations so closely resemble their impotent attempts to curb the drug trade. The gangs involved in the trafficking, the officials involved in its control, and the money to establish the networks switch back and forth between the two cargos.

 

And just as the developed countries have refused to admit the futility of their decades-long attempt to control the flow of illegal drugs, they remain determined to use the same failed methods to stem the flow of illegal human cargo.

 

It appeases the politicians, but as the slaughtered of Tamaulipas would attest if they could speak, the cost in human misery is enormous. Toronto this week became the first city in the world to endorse the Vienna Declaration that affirms the war on drugs hasn't worked, and that it's time for a global switch in strategy toward regulation and harm reduction.

 

The same strategy -- combined with sustained development measures -- is needed to control human smuggling. This is the message Canada should take this month as it meets with Europeans to discuss the problem.

 

The bluster at the borders, the demonizing of the victims and the calls to get tough won't stop the flow of humans and their blood.