PHNOM PENH, June 24
(Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Ministry of
Foreign Affairs dismissed U.S. report
on the situation of human trafficking
in Cambodia released last week as
"untrue and ludicrous" in a statement
issued Monday.
"Undoubtedly, in
the report, there is plenty of
untrue information on the situation of
human trafficking in Cambodia," the
ministry's spokesman said in the
statement. "Many of the issues raised
in the report are either made
from general sweeping assumptions or
lacking real evidence to prove.
Therefore, many of those issues in
the report were ludicrous."
The
reaction was made after the
U.S. State Department, in its 2013
Trafficking in Persons Report released
last Thursday, downgraded Cambodia a
notch to the Tier 2 Watch List--the
scale's second-lowest rank--from Tier 2
for failing to demonstrate evidence of
overall increasing efforts to address
human trafficking in 2012.
Launched
in Washington by U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry, the annual
report described Cambodia as a source,
transit, and destination country for
men, women, and children subjected to
forced labor and sex
trafficking.
The report made
very little recognition of the hard
work and the sincere efforts of
the Government of Cambodia in its
fight against human trafficking, the
statement said.
"Just in 2012
alone, real progress has been made.
A total of 133 suspects related to
human trafficking were arrested and 458
victims were rescued," it said. "At
the meantime, about 300 suspects were
convicted by the courts."
（Editor：YanMeng、Chen
Lidan）
