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BPP Members Visited; Without Hype Or Fanfare; PUP Senator Also Went
Tue, May 24, 2016
So, after hearing that the PUP failed to follow through with their trip to the Sarstoon, border activist Wil Maheia took his fellow BPP party member Bobby Lopez and TV personality Rosalie Staines to the river in his own personal boat.

Maheia had told the teachers that the Security Forces had been closely monitoring his movements ever since the Sarstoon Statutory Instrument was passed. Well, it appears that on Sunday, he was able to make the trip without being stopped.

Here's Rosalie Staines making the announcement only minutes after they had arrived close to the river mouth:

Rosalie Staine
"We are here at the mouth of the Sarstoon and an island is in the back where you see a little blue thatch house, that's the Guatemalan side and our Sarstoon Island is over there. The sea is very rough and our little boat might not be able to get there. We have the Guatemalan armored vessels on the right and our Sarstoon Island is there. I want to tell you that we are all wearing our Belizean flag because nobody will tell us we can't come and traverse our property and our sovereign territorial rights."

And Wil Maheia wasn't satisfied with only just that trip. Yesterday, he and several others, including PUP Senator Valerie Woods went on another visit to the Sarstoon River mouth. They spotted several Guatemalan illegal fishermen, something we've noticed on nearly all our trips to the River mouth.

Today, Senator Woods spoke with us about the fact that the illegal fishermen were allowed to go about their business unhindered, while they, Belizeans who should have a right to move in the area, were the ones questioned:

Hon. Valerie Woods, PUP Senator
"We went to the mouth of the Sarstoon and with the help of the Captain, Wil and Carlos Galvez, on board given a good long history of what's happening on the coastal side of the Sarstoon and the Tamash and Moho with these many fisher camps, namely Guatemalans. With a whole long history there, approaching the Sarstoon area we did find 3 persons in canoe. They were from Guatemala; one can attest just based on type of canoe. When we approached one of them, we asked and they told us they are from the village of Sarstoon on the Guatemala Side. So obviously the question then arises 'well how come is it that they were able to cross over the Sarstoon River?' because according to Belize, we do have this SI and you should not be doing that. So it did raise for me the farce of this SI, where we are blocking Belizeans. Now they were fishing which again makes it illegal because of who they are and where they are coming from. The question that then arose for me was, after we went to the mouth of the Sarstoon, yes we saw the Guatemalan military boat in the distance. We also saw two more canoes from closer to the mouth of the Sarstoon River so that's a total of 5. When we left the area and we came back, I would say it was approaching towards the Temash area, we were approached by a BDF patrol boat with about 5-6 persons in there. We were the ones being questioned such as, 'why are you here?', 'what are you doing out here?', 'does anybody know that you are here?', and I found that a bit ironic. Obviously at that juncture we are well in Belizean territory and no such questioning clearly was done for those who were canoeing and fishing and are not from Belize, yet we're left unabated. We continued along back towards Punta Gorda area and BDF approached us again just to make sure that we really are going back to Punta Gorda and that we weren't making any 'mischief', I believe that was the word used in the back and forth."

As viewers are aware, the ability to speak to the Guatemalan fishermen up close is a very rare opportunity since they usually flee as fast as they can whenever they see any boat, which could be law enforcement coming to stop them from illegal fishing.

Senator Woods stressed to us that she was not representing the Party on this trip. She merely participated in the trip as a concerned civilian interested in seeing for herself what is actually taking place near the southern border.

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