MALA Vello, who was trafficked to Nepal 12 years ago by her partner, is now safely back home.
Her case holds a lesson for people and nations around the world. Begin with the people.
Here we repeat the words of senator Datuk Sivaraj Chandran, one of those who helped bring Mala back to Malaysia: "This is a reminder for everyone not to be swayed by sweet talk, only to be deceived and left to regret it later."
Limerence for a stranger can be a dangerous thing, as some human trafficking victims have come to know. These are dangerous times.
People are being abducted within and across borders, and sold for sex, labour or organs.
Vigilance is advised, not just when looking for love, but also when searching for jobs.
Nations, too, can help curb the growing human trafficking scourge.
The 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report puts the global total trapped in this tragedy at an appalling high of 27 million, a spike of six million based on the International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s estimate in 2015.
A year ago, former British prime minister Gordon Brown put the number at 50 million people, in his op-ed in The Guardian.
Why the disparity in the numbers? Well, being illicit, human trafficking is hard to detect.
Whatever the actual number, it is a global scourge and, as such, it needs international cooperation and coordination.
Start with human trafficking laws. Understandably, in this Westphalian world, every nation has its own version of human trafficking laws.
According to Project Liber8, the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) that helped to bring Mala home, Nepal's Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act only applies to Nepalis. This must change. Otherwise, governments will inadvertently help the human trade grow bigger.
The ILO's latest report says human trafficking generates an estimated US$236 billion of illicit profits every year. And as for countries with relatively expansive human trafficking laws, enforcement seems to be a problem.
To use Brown's data again, out of the 50 million people trafficked, there have only been 15,159 prosecutions and a dismal 5,577 convictions in 2022. This may be due to a lack of knowledge in being able to see the fingerprints of human trafficking among enforcement officers.
Having waged a 17-year war against the global scourge, the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking is well placed to help.
Nations, too, must stand together to compel technology companies, especially tech titans, which are too powerful for a single government to act against.
Their self-policing gimmick has put humanity at great risk. An international legal initiative must be set in motion to regulate technology companies to police their platforms for human traffickers.
Tech companies, some of them spinning yarns about libertarian views of unlimited freedom, have enabled human traffickers to hide behind their platforms.
High-tech human bondage must yield to high-tech policing. Governments around the world, including the United States, where most of the tech titans are from, have left them to self-police for too long. Self-policing never works.
Humans have grown to be in great need of laws, regulations and robust enforcement. So have tech companies. After all, behind every one of them, there are human operators.