SANTO DOMINGO. - Alberto Bogaert, president of the Association of Real Estate Agents and Companies (AEI), believes that the country does not pay attention to people's mental health and understands that the level of violence exhibited today in Dominican society has always been latent.
"The wave of violence we are experiencing has always been there; what we see is a substantial and uncontrolled increase, probably due to issues related to the confinement and uncertainty of the pandemic, among many other reasons," says the representative of the highest organization of real estate agents in the country.
Mental health, he adds, is very important, and the same people, families, and governments don't pay attention to it.
She believes that schools should be alert to psychological issues with children in order to identify changes in the future, which in her opinion requires a state policy to achieve.
Bogaert asked the Dominican population to preach love and family unity, in order to stop the problem of violence in Dominican society, which in recent days has claimed several lives in different incidents that have shocked the country.
"As a society, we can seek refuge in spirituality or religion, but to stop this problem we must preach love and family unity with God at the center of our lives," he said.
62.5% of homicides that occurred in the Dominican Republic in 2021 were domestic violence-related
Of a total of 1,172 homicides that occurred in the Dominican Republic in 2021, 62.5% (733) were domestic, those that occur in fights between citizens, due to a previous incident, such as the well-known case in which the entertainer Manuel Duncan was killed by the former president of the National Directorate for Drug Control (DNCD), Vice Admiral Félix Albuquerque Comprés.
Meanwhile, homicides due to crime in 2021 represented 31.9%, unknown actions were 5.4% and the excessive use of force represented 0.2%.
Homicides in domestic relationships in 2021 were 11% higher than in 2020, when there were 662 such cases.
The data is recorded in the 2021 Statistical Bulletin of the Center for Data Analysis for Citizen Security (Cadseci) of the Ministry of the Interior and Police, which also indicates that, within the cases of last year, 77% were due to fights and disputes, as published by Diario Libre.
The report indicates that deaths that occurred in criminal circumstances totaled 374 in 2021, an increase of 45%, unlike the year 2020 in which 258 of these fatal events were recorded.
Finjus warns about social breakdown
The Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (Finjus) yesterday deplored the climate of violence in the country, where husbands assault wives and fathers rape their daughters. The organization's executive vice president, Servio Tulio Castaños Guzmán, stated that what the State can do is one thing, but family education is another. He lamented the cases of violence where husbands assault their wives.
Tragic weekend
The reflections of the leaders consulted arise from the tragic events that have occurred in the last few hours in the country, in which the communicator Manuel Duncan died at the hands of a former president of the National Directorate for Drug Control (DNCD), in addition to a police agent who killed three women including his ex-wife, in the municipality of Los Alcarrizos, among other violent events.
