The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government on Friday resolutely refuted what it termed “baseless, slanderous remarks” about the city in the annual human trafficking report of the US Department of State.

In its Trafficking in Persons Report 2026, the United States downgraded Hong Kong to the lowest tier from the Tier 2 Watch List, drawing strong reprimands from the SAR government, which said the rating at Tier 3 represents a blatant attempt to tarnish the city’s sterling reputation.

The rating is entirely unfounded, the government said, vehemently opposing and firmly rejecting “false and groundless remarks” in the so-called report on Hong Kong's efforts to tackle trafficking in persons (TIP).

“TIP has never been a prevalent problem in Hong Kong, and there has never been any sign that Hong Kong is being actively used by syndicates as a destination or transit point for TIP,” a government spokesman said in a statement.

All along proactive in the fight against TIP, the HKSAR government has adopted a comprehensive multi-pronged strategy, devoting significant recurrent resources to combating TIP and enhancing the protection for foreign domestic helpers (FDHs) in the city, said the spokesman.

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The SAR government conducted around 12,100 initial screenings in 2025 and identified 15 TIP victims, all of whom were Hong Kong residents falling prey to employment fraud in Southeast Asian countries, according to the government.

“The report's baseless attacks on Hong Kong's victim screening efforts are deeply hypocritical and reflect of serious double standards, especially when studies and reports within the United States have highlighted systematic underreporting of human trafficking cases by domestic law enforcement in the United States,” reads the statement.

Year after year, the report has continued to fabricate criticisms about the city’s efforts to tackle TIP and the quality of the screenings exposes its true nature “as a politically-motivated, despicable smear campaign designed to mislead the international community”, it added.