Leaked embassy documents…BaiShanLin refused to provide evidence workers returned to China

Sep 06, 2016 News

In the last five years or so, Chinese logging company, BaiShanLin International Forest Developments Inc., applied for visas for hundreds of workers from China.

Baishanlin’s local chief, Chu Hongbo

In 2013 alone, up to October, the company was approved up to 290 visas by the Government of Guyana, some of them business visas. And the company wanted more.
When the British and German immigration authorities detained a number of Chinese workers destined for Guyana on a number of flights, they were convinced that it could be a case of human trafficking.
The Guyana embassy in China was warned of the suspicions after a number of female workers who did not fit the profile of forestry workers were held just as they were about to board flights.
According to leaked embassy correspondence seen by Kaieteur News, BaiShanLin was written about the need to provide timely updates that the workers were returning to China when their contract period was up in Guyana.
The correspondence, which came to light last week, would indicate how little attention the authorities of Guyana, under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) paid to the logging company and those workers.
BaiShanLin was written to in November 2014 by the Guyana Embassy in China warning that they needed to be more forthcoming with information and that immigration officials in Europe were paying keen attention to workers who were leaving China for BaiShanLin’s local operations.
The correspondence made it clear that BaiShanLin’s local head, Chu Hongbo, was apprised of the scrutiny.
The embassy threatened the logging company to establish a system whereby there would be spot checks on Baishanlin to make sure that the workers given visas are still in Guyana rather than trafficked to Suriname and Brazil, as was being alleged.
The leaked correspondence said that the embassy started to pressure BaiShanLin to submit evidence that business visa holders had returned to China. This “evidence” was a photocopy of their Chinese entry stamp.
However, BaiShanLin was unmoved by the threats of the Guyana embassy.
As a matter of fact, the embassy threatened to stop issuing BaiShanLin any business visas and instead referred any application the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The embassy in October 2013 had written the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, complaining that BaiShanLin was warned not to book tickets for Chinese workers it wanted to bring to Guyana until visas were issued.
The Chinese company has built up a heavy presence in Guyana, but several of its promised multimillion-dollar projects have stalled due to the entity having financial problems. It owes the Government and local companies millions of dollars for properties it has acquired.
Government last year halted logging exports for a number of BaiShanLin’s operations.
The embassy correspondence has claimed that Baishanlin even offered ‘gifts’ to the staffers of the embassy, but were rebuffed. The attempted bribery was reported to the then Ambassador, Professor David Dabydeen.

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