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Human trafficking has to be dealt with upstream: Singapore PM

Xinhua, June 6, 2015 Adjust font size:

Human trafficking and refugees are issues that must be dealt in the source countries of these migrants, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said during an interview with 17 visiting journalists from the nine ASEAN countries, local media reported on Friday.

Commenting on the plight of thousands of Rohingyas and Bangladeshi refugees stranded at sea, the prime minister said this is "a complex problem" in the interview with ASEAN journalists on Thursday.

He said the living conditions for these people must be pretty severe, otherwise, they would not be going to sea and putting themselves in such danger of life with their children and womenfolk at the mercy of the traffickers.

Lee said ASEAN member states can discuss the issue, but the source countries should tackle the problem, or at least mitigate the hardships of the desperate human beings so that they do not feel impelled to put to sea and so that others are not exploiting them in order to make money.

Lee added the traffickers must be stopped too. He said that the human traffickers are well-organized entrenched groups in several countries, and they make money out of this and have an interest in keeping the flow going and extorting money from the desperate human beings.

Lee stressed that the problem has to be dealt upstream as "no country can take an endless number of refugees on humanitarian grounds." Endi