IS BELIZE being politically pressured by the United States for its alleged failure to effectively deal with a human trafficking problem; or is it really caught up in Washington's covert agenda against governments in this Hemisphere with unwavering support for Cuba and Venezuela?
Current CARICOM chairman, Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago, will be exposed to the problem when he meets today in Belize with Prime Minister Said Musa who he may find in quite an angry mood with President George Bush's administration over the human trafficking problem.
Musa who, like Manning, will be attending next month's CARICOM Heads of Government Summit in St Kitts, is livid with the United States State Department for slapping Belize with a punitive "Tier-3" rating because, in the reckoning of Washington, that Community partner state has not been forthcoming enough to arrest the crime in human trafficking for which it has been identified as a "source" and "transit" point.
In a telephone conversation with the
Human trafficking or "trafficking in persons" is a worldwide problem, often highlighted by the callous degradation of women and children seduced for the sex trade and/or as a cheap source of labour annually around the world, with thousands also recruited into the United States. Often linked to unscrupulous trans-border business enterprises and criminal networks, Caribbean governments are being increasingly sensitised by agencies of the United Nations and reports of international human rights organisations on policies and measures to seriously deal with this global challenge.
The United States has assumed a lead policing role in the battle against human trafficking and its State Department's annual report on the issue has often targeted countries in the Caribbean-Latin American region in its global assessment.
But in so doing, it has been accused by governments, and not only in the greater Caribbean region, of arbitrarily using a one-to-three rating system in assessing a country's response to human trafficking that can have negative economic and political consequences for the particular country.
Previously, Guyana and Jamaica had come under heavy pressure for their respective unilaterally imposed United States ratings on claimed unsatisfactory responses to the trafficking in persons, both within their jurisdiction and beyond their borders.
They fought back with varying complaints and actions and won adjustments from "Uncle Sam", as revealed in the United States State Department Human Trafficking Report.
Barbados and Suriname have now been added to the list of CARICOM countries in the latest United States report on human trafficking as location points for women as prostitutes.
However, in relation to Belize, a country too poor and incapable of effectively monitoring illegal migration across borders with Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, the United States has identified it as "the source, transit and destination country" for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of labour and sexual exploitation.
Consequently, a harsh Tier-3, rating in accordance with Uncle Sam's unilateral rating system in which the affected or victim nation is simply left to work its way out of such a punitive category.
Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Musa felt it was just too much, coming at this time from an administration whose own records in human rights abuses – at home and abroad, to judge by international human rights monitors – are simply too woeful and scandalous to be ignored.
Declaring that the United States should have a look in the mirror, Musa chose to state his response to the State Department's latest report on human trafficking as follows:
"Those who seek to judge us should perhaps examine their own decadent societies before they come and pass judgement on us."