ROC Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Chin-tien Yang met with a Taiwanese woman alleged to be a victim of human trafficking in Orange County, California, Nov. 22 U.S. time, promising any help the government could provide.
The woman, known by the pseudonym Isabel, was accompanied by a lawyer and social workers during the one-hour meeting, in which Yang expressed the widespread concern felt in Taiwan society for Isabel’s case. Yang was on a stopover in Los Angeles en route to El Salvador for the 15th Mixed Commission for Cooperation between Countries of the Central American Isthmus and the ROC.
In a later news conference, which the woman did not attend, Yang said she now has a stable job and is content with her life, but is reluctant to talk about her past.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would spare no effort in helping her reunite with her family in Taiwan, should she wish to do so, Yang said. Isabel was not yet ready to phone the family in Taitung County, eastern Taiwan, which claims to be her biological family, he added. Other people have also come forward saying they could be related to her, according to media reports in Taiwan.
“We have to verify carefully. We don’t want to have more damage to her feelings,” Yang told CNN in a telephone interview.
Isabel’s case came into the media spotlight after it was featured in a recent report on CNN’s Freedom Project, which said Isabel was sold into slavery by her impoverished parents at the age of seven to a rich Taiwanese family that later emigrated to California.
Isabel, brought to the U.S. with the family, was reportedly physically abused, fed spoiled food and forced to work over 17 hours a day without payment. She managed to escape from the abusers with the assistance of an anonymous person, and settled a civil lawsuit against the family, according to the CNN report.
After seeing media reports about Isabel, Ho Hsiao-ying, a Paiwan aborigine from Taitung, claimed Nov. 20 that Isabel is her long-lost sister Ho Hsiao-feng.
Ho Hsiao-ying said her older sister was sold to a wealthy Taiwanese family when she was young, a phenomenon that was not uncommon in Taiwan many years ago.
Yang told CNN in the interview that over the years Taiwan has made significant progress in combating human trafficking, which is now rarely seen in the country.
“I can assure you people in Taiwan are very much humanitarian. They try to help other people. That's why people expressed their concern, sympathy and try every way to help her,” he said. (THN)
Write to Rachel Chan at rachelchan@mail.gio.gov.tw