BELIZE CITY—News out of Taipei, Taiwan, today is that Belize’s Minister responsible for Immigration, Senator Godwin Hulse, has inked a new human trafficking agreement with Taiwan Interior Minister Chen Wei-zen, at the conclusion of Hulse’s 5-day visit to Taiwan.
According to the Embassy of Taiwan in Belize, Hulse and his wife, Eleanor, were invited to visit Taiwan from August 11 to 15, 2014.
The Embassy said that on this fourth visit to Taiwan, Hulse was due to sign the “Agreement Concerning Cooperation in Immigration Affairs and Human Trafficking Prevention”, which it said is “a new milestone” in bilateral relations between the countries.
Chen said that Taiwan has retained its top tier 1 rank in the US Trafficking in Persons Report for five consecutive years, due to its good performance in the prevention and control of human trafficking.
Taiwan has similar agreements with 8 other countries, including Mongolia, Honduras, Indonesia, and the United States.
Before his departure from Belize in July, H.E. David Wu, the former Ambassador of the Republic of China on Taiwan to Belize, told us, in response to our questions over concerns set out in the 2014 US Trafficking in Persons Report (in which Belize was downgraded to the tier 2 watch list due to what the US classified as a trend of forced labor in Asian restaurants and shops here in Belize), that he is indeed concerned about human trafficking, but he asserted that their citizens are law-abiding. At the time, Wu informed us that Minister Hulse was to soon visit Taiwan for the signing of the human trafficking agreement, signed in Taiwan today.
Taiwan’s Interior Minister commented at today’s signing that in order to put a stop to human trafficking, it is important to work with other countries and build a mechanism for international cooperation.
Apart from the signing of the accord, Hulse’s itinerary also included calls on Dr. Hao Feng Min, Acting Minister of Labor of Taiwan, and Mr. Mo Tien Hu, Director General of Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency. Visits were also arranged for him to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Taichung-Changhua-Nantou Regional Branch, Workforce Development Agency, Ministry of Labor.
(Photo: Taiwan’s Ministry of Interior)