With respect, I have followed the blog entry re “Appeal to Stop Human Trafficking in Belize.”

First, thank you for taking the time to discuss this important issue of human trafficking victims forced into prostitution in Belize. The Organization for Responsible Tourism’s campaign is talking about young women who have been lured away from their homes outside of Belize and are now trapped in bars, many of them in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye. To make a long story short, they are there because of a system of corruption, which starts at the Belize borders. There are young women, average age 17, unable to escape some of your local bars, living a life in hell you and I can hardly imagine experiencing. Our organizations is concerned with precisely this condition and state of affairs.

Let me clear up a few things about the ORT’s campaign: Our highly skilled use of the Internet is real and its growing additional international traction daily. Achieving 365 million global page views of articles in 6 weeks is not the accomplishment of a group of hobbyists, I assure you. Our blog sites are heavily traveled. To give you a perspective, our online traffic attracts many ads, including a substantial representation from the travel and tourism industry. This is a global anti-human trafficking project that is growing. It’s not a nuisance or the work of pranksters: there are people all over the world who are working with us to address the Belize human trafficking vortex. We invite you to join us.

As for our messages about Ambergris Caye, we are merely the messengers, but as you can see, we are messengers with a powerful and wide-reaching instrument. We have nothing against you or your community. We want this hell to end for these young women and for no more victims to be brought to San Pedro through the Belize human trafficking superhighway.

As for my own perspective: I have been all over Belize, including your community. I have been there to help take girls out of the San Pedro area to safe haven in Honduras. We’ve been to Big Daddy’s and other establishments where these inhumane conditions prevail. A number of other expat Ambergris Caye residents already have gone there and other places to find exactly what we have described. They followed up by questioning local police authorities.

With the greatest respect, I suggest that you leave your keyboards and follow up on what I assume are shared concerns and do likewise. Ask the police how many prostitution charges have been laid in your community in the last year. The year before or before that? The answer will be none.

Now I ask this question to the bloggers. No arrests or charges for prostitution ever in San Pedro Town? According to the Liquor License Act any bar owner offering prostitution is should face a $50 BZ fine. Ask the police and they will tell you they have laid no charges under this act. Yet a number of your posts suggested or agreed that yes this is happening at bars in San Pedro Town. Why are you not doing something?

Go to any of San Pedro Town back street bars and you will find the women are all from other countries. Most have been fooled by a woman known as Michelle Wilson, or Candy, as she is sometimes called. She is well known outside Belize by immigration authorities in other countries

Wilson is a human trafficker. She lives and profits by her trade in San Pedro, untouched by Belize authorities. Yes. San Pedro Police know exactly her business. The owner of the Black and White Bar, a close friend of the Mayor’s family, is in the same business line as Wilson.

Ask any cab driver outside any San Pedro bar – the Tropic Air, for example -- you will have no problem finding women on offer for commercial sexual exploitation. Many of them will not be Belizean and not in these bars of their own free will. Same goes for Orange Walk or Belize City.

The San Pedro Mayor and her brother own Big Daddy’s. If you have not been to Big Daddy’s you might find the facts of this establishment instructive. As reported by San Pedro media, the Mayor has extended special privileges to her family in the case of Big Daddy’s. There are only two nightclub licenses in San Pedro, with Big Daddy’s holding one of them. Perhaps you need to head down to Big Daddy’s after 1:00 a.m. when the other bars are closed. Local Police, still in uniform, offer security for the place. Just ask for drugs or women: not a problem. They’re breaking the law and have for years under Paz family protection and police corruption.

San Pedro had an interim immigration head named Dyer, he came in and cleaned up the bars; one week I heard he collected 64 women, he even checked local gringo businesses for work visas etc.. Now he is gone or restrained by the new Immigration Chief who wants little noise about this problem. No human trafficking charges.

In closing, I hope that you consider three courses of action: 1) stop thinking this doesn’t happen in your community; 2) confirm for yourselves the presence of human trafficking victims trapped in your local ficha bars; and 3) challenge local police on their records and inaction.

You could start, for example, by demanding that current liquor licensing laws be enforced – a fine for bars found to be profiting from on-premises prostitution.

In future blog entries, I plan to name more names and illustrate with photographs the San Pedro Ambergris Caye business people – from the top on down -- who are allowed to profit from human trafficking.