Australian police will work with their counterparts in China, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Korea to target the 'kingpins' of the sex slave trade. It follows a three-day meeting in Sydney. Click below to listen to the program.
MARK COLVIN: The fight against sexual slavery is being ramped up a notch.
Police officials from the Asia region, who've been meeting in Sydney for the past few days, have learned that the trade is more organised than first thought.
And they've decided to form unprecedented joint operations to target modern day slave traders.
National security correspondent, Matt Brown, reports.
MATT BROWN: In a low key meeting, in a luxury Sydney hotel, senior Asian police officials from China down to Indonesia and Australia have agreed to escalate their battle against people trafficking.
The victims are usually sex slaves. You could be forgiven for assuming these agencies already share intelligence on this subject fairly freely.
But that's easier said than done. And Federal Police Commander Ramzi Jabbour says the Sydney meeting has resolved to launch new joint investigations to get at the people running the sex slave trade.
RAMZI JABBOUR: By bringing together and sharing intelligence in relation to all our holdings, it will certainly focus our efforts on the kingpins.
MATT BROWN: The issue of whether this trade's being run by organised crime has in the past been a bone of contention. But Ramzi Jabbour says following the Sydney meeting, there's less and less doubt.
RAMZI JABBOUR: It's become quite evident to us that we are dealing with organised criminality in sending people to Australia for trafficking purposes.
MATT BROWN: The victims of sexual slavery are relatively easy to see: they are usually women from South East Asia, and they're caught up in raids by police and immigration officials often enough.
But Ramzi Jabbour and his counterparts from countries like Malaysia and Thailand are hoping new layers of the trade will now be revealed.
RAMZI JABBOUR: By bringing together all the intelligence into a central point, we're able to potentially identify organisers or facilitators that are common amongst a variety of trafficking victims.
If we were working in isolation; the Malays working on their own, the Thais working on their own; they may never actually see the fact that one or two organisers are actually behind these criminal syndicates.
MATT BROWN: The AFP is also going to take on a unique role. Its officers, posted throughout Asia, are about to become liaison officers for their neighbours - helping other Asian police from different countries work with each other.
RAMZI JABBOUR: For example, Royal Malaysian Police could make an approach to the AFP liaison officer in Kuala Lumpur, provide them with a request, we could provide that request to the Royal Thai Police through our liaison officer in Bangkok, and we could get quite a timely response and feed that back to the Malaysian police.
MATT BROWN: So what does that mean for an investigation for example?
RAMZI JABBOUR: Well, it means that in the case of victims we're getting very timely responses. We're able to verify their situation and we're able to potentially identify other victims at risk in a much more timely fashion.
MATT BROWN: Several non-government organisations are working on campaigns funded by the Federal Government to raise awareness of people trafficking in Australia.
The police have launched more than 270 investigations since 2004 and 90 per cent of them have been about sexual slavery.
But ten per cent have focussed on the plight of people being dreadfully exploited in other industries.
JENNIFER BURN: There have been a number of cases where people have been indentified in industries such as agriculture or construction.
Jennifer Burn, the director of the Anti-Slavery Project at the University of Technology in Sydney, says much more needs to be discovered about this area of people trafficking, and the new international effort might help.
JENNIFER BURN: What we would like to see is a greater focus on all forms of trafficking and slavery and in particular look at the patterns of slavery into industries which as yet haven't really been identified as… for their potential to have exploited labour forces working in them.
MARK COLVIN: Associate Professor Jennifer Burn, director of the Anti-Slavery Project, ending that report from Matt Brown.
