Another negative documentary about Belize?
While on the issue of crime, remember the Ross Kemp documentary on the gangs in Belize? It made many wary of foreign journalists portraying Belize as a dangerous place where tourist dollars should stay away from. While the Kemp documentary was aired back in September, there is another that is about to bring the purported social ills of Belize to the world stage. This time it’s Patrik Elias, a hockey player for the New Jersey Devils, who is about to give his impression of Belize to sporting fans of the National Hockey League, a major sports channel. What makes this particular documentary vexing is that Elias, originally from the Czech Republic is a UNICEF spokesman who made his trip to Belize in September. The New York Post quotes Elias as saying “All the kids in the hospital are one year old, two years old, HIV positive, and with AIDS. That’s part of it… that, and the areas where the poor people live. The poverty is so bad. They’re eating garbage.” When contacted by News Five, Rana Flowers, UNICEF’s Representative in Belize said none of their representatives witnessed the extremely derogatory comments reported by the New York Post. She told News Five she has contacted the producer of the documentary who told her that Elias may sue the Post reporter because he did not make those statements about Belize. In fact, Elias who played football with some city youth’s, intends to return to Belize with his wife on vacation. We found a video on the internet in which Elias explains his work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Patrik Elias, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Czech Republic
“Every year we do the hospital visits and it’s important to us but more important to the kids and the people that we see in the hospital. All obviously because of what happened to me, we realised that there’s something more to life than just playing Hockey and I became an ambassador for UNICEF for Czech Republic and in life and in sports I think you can bring a lot of other people to get involved in charities and I’m looking forward to that. I didn’t’ know what Hepatitis was and I really didn’t know it can knock you out like that and I was in the hospital for about three or four weeks and I couldn’t eat anything I couldn’t get out of bed and I had to start from scratch and work my back into shape and that was hard.”
Hundreds of thousands of viewers watch the N.H.L. games. Elias’ documentary on Belize will air on the N.H.L. network tonight at nine p.m. with scheduled repeats.
