Back in January, the National Aids Commission's Equal Opportunity Bill was introduced publicly, with strong opposition coming from the more conservative-minded Belizeans.
As we've reported, the Commission spent over a year to produce a piece of draft legislation to tackle 19 different forms of discrimination that Belizeans face every day.
The drafters of the bill say that at its core, it is designed to give equal protection under the law to these citizens who are being discriminated against. It should have been a bill that unites Belizeans together in the fight to create a fairer and more inclusive society. But, Belizean conservatives, including the church, say that the bill goes too far in its attempts to protect the rights of victims of discrimination. Of course, they are not celebrating that the local gay community is being included in the 19 groups of Belizeans being protected from discrimination under the proposed bill.
They were complaining that the process to enact this bill as a law was being rushed. And, now that reports have emerged that the Government may table it in the House very soon, some of the most vocal voices against the bill are trying to build support to push back against it.
This evening, our colleagues spoke to Pastor Scott Stirm and Louis Wade about the current draft of the Equal Opportunities Bill. Here's what they had to say:
Pastor Scott Stirm
"I would say looking at the draft that has come September 9th I would say absolutely not. The current copy of the equal opportunity bill is about 95-97% of what is was in January. I just finish going through it and there are a few minor changes, but senior legal counsel to us has called the equal opportunity a monster. There was a couple what we would consider to be wild and crazy points that we raised is a concern on and we saw that they remove those points, but the central core of the problem that we have still has not changed and so the equal opportunity bill is calling for the establishing of an equal opportunity commission that will receive complaints and investigate and find out if these things be so and then of there is enough evidence will hand that over to the equal opportunity tribunal which is headed by a supreme court justice and that supreme court justice, that tribunal has the authority to fine up to $20,000 and that's right there in equal opportunity bill and it states for both the commission and the tribunal that they are not subject to any other authority or person and so that is scary. That's why senior attorney counsel called this thing a monster."
"Our concern is that everything is being rushed with this. Even though with Covid and everything, it seems like it was a long period of time, but we had 4 days' notice at the beginning of consultation. It was on a Tuesday or a Wednesday that they announce the consultations are starting on Saturday and they didn't even give us a copy of the bill until the morning of the first consultation. People are supposed to go into the consultation and answer questions or give feedback on a bill that they never even seen, don't even know what it means. People don't even know about the consultations, so everything is being rushed, up to this current one right now. They release a new copy of the bill last week and they want it to go through the house this week and so everything is always high-pressured, but worse than that there are constitutional violations being forecasted or called for in the equal opportunity bill. Our constitution states that somebody is innocent until proven guilty. The responsibility is on the state to prove someone guilty. In the equal opportunity it's the exact opposite. It says if someone brings a Prima facie case against another person for discrimination, the burden is on the respondent to prove that they did not discriminate. So you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent and so it's exact opposite of the constitution."
Pastor Louis Wade
"People across the country, religious and non-religious people have out rightly rejected this bill in forums across the country. What the government did was labeled all those people as the church and just continued on its merry way. Which in the church does have its clergy and its leaders and they can actually get exemptions, but the people who this law will affect the most are ordinary every day Belizeans that have their own concept of morality and their own concept of discrimination. We all believe in equality, we all believe in non-discrimination, but the government from the fact that they have a law with $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 fees, six months in prison, commission and a tribunal - clearly what they are thinking about with discrimination and equality is totally different from what the Belizeans think. So the government is imposing on Belizeans without our knowledge, without our consent, without our agreement - their idea of equality, their idea of discrimination. We are asking Belizeans to wear white on Tuesday and prepare to take action on Thursday. So tomorrow is a wait and see day in your white piece and then Thursday will be a day of action across the country of Belize and we are asking people from tonight stay tuned to facebook, because we will be broadcasting across the country our thoughts, ideas and our activities, so that people will be easily connected and a hashtag is going to be sent out tonight where people from across the country will be able to connect to every single activity that we will be having between now and Thursday."
