Anti-Trafficking Committee Says Report is Tainted
Judith Alpuche
While the Committee absolutely disagreed with the downgrade, it is what it is. As far as Alpuche is concerned, they can only do what they’ve been doing because in the end it is about human rights, not about a classification by the U.S.
On the Phone: Judith Alpuche, Chair, Belize Anti-Trafficking Committee
“There is work ongoing gin human trafficking, work that we provided the information to the US authorities, and they have chosen not to focus on the information we provided. They provided a recommended work-plan, and as I go through that a lot of these things are well underway, so all I can say is that our work has to continue. We cannot manufacture victims. We will not lie about the amount of victims that we deal with, so if it so happens that in 2015 we were able to identify less potential victims we can’t manufacture them and we will not lie about what we are doing. We cannot manufacture convictions either. They have to go through the legal process, and we have cases in Court and they have to go through the legal process. So all we can do Mike is continue working…working on these issues because it is the right thing to do because it is about upholding people’s human rights and working within the resource constraints that we have and doing the best that we can to improve the system, because it is not all about convictions from our perspective. We have to look at it more comprehensively and more broadly.”
When a country is placed on the Tier Three watch-list for Human Trafficking, the U.S. can elect to withdraw non-humanitarian aid.
Why don’t you work your way to the places that even blind eye jamsie can see traffic Spanish girls- like la catracha on coney drive like that neon bar at mile one next to belize mills and like another anout to open in front of Canaan high school on coney? Even police can be seen at these places as frequent if not the best customers
The fault of our downgrade Belize to tier 3 is on the shoulder of the news media. In the U.S. Embassy, there is a department exclusively dedicated to collecting printed media stories and radio/T.V. police report, they are always on the alert to anything adverse to Belize. So, while the news people jump at any opportunity in reporting juicy stories and the U.S. Embassy is always too eager to report on to H.Q. in the U.S.A.