LIU Director Visits Belize Central Prison Amid State of Emergency Detentions

In related news, the LIU Director, Dominique Norales, paid a visit to the Belize Central Prison yesterday.  During her visit she met with the men detained under the State of Emergency.  In speaking on her visit, Norales made it clear that the purpose of her visit was not to get the men out of prison before the SoE expiration on September 24.

Dominique Noralez, Chairperson, Leadership Intervention Unit: “I think honesty is important to them. They want to talk to someone who is real and honest and won’t sell them dreams and that was my main thing when I went yesterday to the Kolbe Foundation is that I’m not here to make any promises that I could let you go before September 24, I am here to listen and understand how I can help you beyond September 24th. So there’s not another SOE and that if there is another SOE you’re not on it and if you do have children, they never get the experience that their rights are taken away from them for 30 to 90 days. So my work happens before an SOE and happens after an SOE. We have nothing to do with creating that list. In fact, there are 90 people I think that are detained. I think just about 20 or 25 of them are people who were once on LIU or currently on LIU. And so when people say “oh well it’s all of those LIU men getting detained.” I have 273 people on the outside right now that are getting paid, about ten of them are on suspension, some of them would have not even made it on the list before the SOE was called so I think there is a lot of misconception about who we interact with. And I think the society needs to also understand people face significant deprivations. This is why the program became necessary. If we didn’t have the problem, the program wouldn’t have been necessary. And so we’re trying our best to fix and convince everybody from me up and for me down that this program is necessary and I’m doing my best to make sure that it works within the four million dollar budget that we have been given.”

The State of Emergency was effected on June 24 for certain hotspots in Belize City as well as portions of the Cayo District, including Cotton Tree Village and the areas of Hattieville and Another World in Roaring Creek Village.