Minister Musa Defends Need for State of Emergency

In defending the government’s decision to proceed with a state of emergency, Home Affairs Minister Kareem Musa says that it is the last resort, considering all previous efforts to bring the warring factions to a ceasefire.  Ironically, S.O.E.s were criticized by Musa when his party was in opposition a year ago.

Isani Cayetano

“How would you respond to the criticism that while in Opposition you scoffed at the notion of a state of emergency and given the increase in crime and violence and gang-related incidents in Belize City, you’re forced to have to resort to that very measure?”

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“It’s not a matter of being forced, what we have to understand when we look at human rights is that there is a basic right to life that we have to observe.  Even as human rights advocates, we see where the trend was going, the pattern of young men killing one another and it really is a domino effect because the retaliation that is taking place as a result of one single murder, it then amounts to about ten on two weeks and so really, we thought that it was necessary to hit the pause button, like I said, reluctantly so.  We don’t want to have to resort to this but we have to at this time because we saw in May where I think there were ten murders that were gang-related and early on in August there were about four or five.  And so we need to have these young men sit down so that we can all discuss and we can have intervention teams, counselors going in to try to sort out the differences with these young men because this is not something, like I said, that any government would want to do but at the same time we have to protect our law-abiding citizenry.”