The Belize Commission for Justice and Reparations continued its awareness raising campaigning today with a Press Conference and update to its civil society partners. We learned more from the Coordinator about the effort to mainstream the idea of reparations:..
Jules Vasquez
"It's not something that will enter the main stream. Do you think you are making progress towards mainstreaming this idea?"
Cesar Ross, VC, Initiative for Justice & Reparations
"Yes, we are trying very hard. We are traveling across the country to bring it and you are right. It's not the discussion that occurs around the water bottles or around the street corners. It's not. It has become a little more. It's being discussed a little more, but it's far from mainstream as such and that's one of the first things we have to push. This needs to be sort of a roots movement. It needs to be a movement of the masses and we need to get in there before we can ever look at Europe and tell Europe that they have to do something. We have to make sure that the mass is the people are fully in understanding and fully in support of this movement as such."
Reporter
"The fact remains as I think I've said to you before, that we are depending on the very same people that are in charge of the system to change the system. Is that sort of contradictory? What do you think of that?"
Cesar Ross, VC, Initiative for Justice & Reparations
"Yes, and that's the important agenda that we have at this point in time. We can't, you can never ask politicians to change the political structure. They benefit from this system that is as such. And so what we are doing is we are trying to create a critical mass. We are trying to create a population in which the people are the ones which begin to make demands."
Ross told us that Belize has not appointed a Commissioner for Justice and Reparations further to the CARICOM region wide initiative.
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