Belize’s Hattieville Central prison is where 400 human trafficking victims are sent each year. Usually, it’s for 90 days on remand for being an illegal without passport or other identification documents. This nets this foul and inhumane institution over $400,000 a year. They are paid by the Belize government for their services.
Trafficking victims have no identification. That’s how they are kept prisoner, usually by bar owners profiting from forced prostitution of victims. So they are easy prey for the immigration officials and police who regularly find them. Corrupt immigration officials are paid off to find these victims and ensure they wind up in Hattieville for the profit of the Kolbe Foundation, which runs the prison.
How the girls wind up in Hattieville: First, immigration or police who are on the take sweeps them up. The more prisoners the Kolbe Foundation gets for housing prisoners, the more the money they have to spread around. Some goes to the immigration staff, some to police and some to magistrates.
Here’s the scenario for a girl trafficking victim who’s been picked up:
These women have no legal representation, required by law in Belize, but rarely enforced for these girls – a violation of their human rights, but things are just getting started.
They have no one to help them and no one to call. They are simply left in the system by the ficha bar owners who can always get replacements – pretty well immediately. They don’t care.
At the hearing, the charges are read and if the woman pleads not guilty, the bail is set at $3,000 (Belize) – always the same amount. What the girls don’t know is: if they plead guilty the fine is only $500 (Belize) – which is absurd, bail is so much greater than the fine.
Needless to say, almost all the women cannot make bail. So they are sent to Hattieville Central Prison. The prison gets $1080 (Belize) for girls who are remanded to their “care” for 90 days. It’s in the Kolbe Foundation’s interest and everyone in the system that’s on the take to keep the easy marks – the human trafficking victims – steadily supplied to the prison.
The Foundation’s website depicts a picture perfect story of what appears a clean well-run facility with a number of remarkable programs and belief-based activities. However, Amnesty International and others have documented the human rights violations, including torture, which regularly takes place in Hattieville.
Former Belize Prime Minister Said Musa basically ran the prison from Belmopan while making his Kolbe Foundation cronies rich. One other crony, Michael Singh is still a Foundation board member.
Life in the hell of the ficha bar is still better than life in Hattieville. Even though a ficha bar trafficking victim can have forced sex with up to 15 men a night, it is still preferable to the life in Hattieville.
While the women in Hattieville are kept separate from the men, life is a living hell.
Women in their cellblock target attractive girls for sexual assaults. The guards are corrupt and without money you women sell them to survive or face rape or worse.
The food can best be described as leftovers of rice and chicken that could not be sold to humans. It is delivered by the Hattieville staff in a wheelbarrow and is dished out into whatever container a prisoner can find to hold food. Most have no containers so use their hands. That is the main meal of the day. The rest is milk and stale bread.
If a prisoner has money purchases can be made at the Hattieville store by paying a runner to fetch items. Even with money, prisoners are only allowed a limited number of items per week.
Prisoners have no access to the outside world, no phone calls, no lawyer, no family nothing but counting the days.
At nights they are locked down. Drugs flow freely from cell to cell using a string with a saved plastic container as the receptacle. Perhaps the keepers understand this is the only way women can survive.
Kolbe Foundation’s describes a number of programs for inmates. Those in on immigration charges are on remand where they are locked down for 23 hours a day in a concrete box. In some cases the box is shared by as many as ten other women, with no bathroom facilities -- only a bucket. Prisoners are let out of their cage for 30 minutes a day to showers in salt water. The human trafficking victims are thrown together with women detained for everything from murder on down.
Women must concede to the fact that in order to survive they must submit to guards selling them for sex. If women don’t comply they are beaten and raped. Some small favorable treatments may come a prisoner’s way through co-operation.
When the 90 days are up, there is no court hearing. It is just lost in the legal process and forgotten about.
After release from prison, the women have two days to leave Belize. They have only the clothes on their backs when they leave Hattieville, their belongings long ago stolen by staff. With no money and no resources, many of the women wind up back in the ficha bars simply for survival. Many simply disappear once they leave the Hattieville gates.
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