Police Says State of Emergency Is A Necessary Course Of Action

The State of Emergency may be extended from time to time by a resolution passed by the National Assembly for further periods. As we mentioned, the SOE is a response to the recent flare-up in gang activity, which sparked concerns about public safety. Like in previous SOEs, residents in the targeted area say that this violates their human rights. Police Commissioner Chester Williams said that it is necessary for ensuring the good of the wider public.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“I have never heard the government being critical of it. I’ve heard that the SOE must use as a measure of last resort. I don’t think that any reasonable Belizean would ever say that the government and the police is not doing enough. We have an entire LIU program which is geared towards helping young people to help those young men who are caught up to see how they can come out of living that lifestyle. We are doing interventions. They are given employment opportunity. So the truth is that the government and the police is trying but again, we all know that there are going to be those persons who will not want to live a peaceful life and may continue to live that violent lifestyle. And so the SOE is geared at going after those persons. The amount of persons we expect to be detained from the SOE is not a huge number. It’s going to be a small number of persons because we just want to be able to pluck out the bad seeds and allow those other persons who are part of the LIU program and are productive to continue to do so.”

 

Britney Gordon

“Some people feel that SOEs are a violation of human rights. How does the police respond to this?”

 

Chester Williams

“Which rights is more important? The rights of fifty persons who hold the country, the city hostage? Or the rights of fifty people? Over one hundred forty thousand in a city or the rights of four hundred forty thousand people. We have to strike a balance and I’m sure that some human rights activists are going to agree that as a part of human rights, we have to look at the greater picture to see if we’re going to allow  these people whose right we believe should be protected to continue to extinct themselves. I think that if we allow the extinction to continue, then we will be in breach of human rights norms because we are seeing a trend and we just allow it to continue. The fact that we step in and do the SOE, so get them to have a pause and to rethink, I think goes in line with maintaining human rights norms.”