Yesterday, we gave you extensive coverage of our interview with General David Jones as he discussed the recent meeting that he had with a Guatemalan Navy Admiral, in the wake of the Sarstoon Incident.
We also asked him about the Guatemalan fishers who poach in Belizean waters near the mouth of the Sarstoon River.
You'll remember that's the situation which is difficult to deal with because as you saw - our Daniel Ortiz tried to catch them himself, and wound up stuck in waist deep mud.
The General said that this pretty much the difficulty that his soldiers face when they tried to catch the fishermen, but that they make it a point to try to do so just because:
General David Jones, BDF Commander
"Whenever our patrols go into the area, if we see any fisherman and is operating inside Belizean waters, we do something about it. We don't just pass through and as you have seen on the news footage I think even yourself when you pursue these guys they have small vessels. They quickly go onto the shore of the coast and then they disappeared. We have pursued countless of times similar as that, but they are quite aware that our boats because of the engines that we cannot pursue them in the shallow waters. So it is not that easy to stop it, but whenever we go 
there on different days that are not routine, we are able to catch more fishermen doing illegal activities in the area. It's a fisheries jurisdiction. It's not a BDF jurisdiction. The BDF is there to support whichever organization is responsible especially dealing with fisheries law. But we support the fisheries, forestry or any department that goes in the area. We are primarily going through the Sarstoon to do military patrols and routine operations in the area with the local law enforcement authority and we always go in with them base on intelligence we go in, not just on a routine, but on intelligence information, we follow the law enforcement authorities and we arrest the situation."
As you heard, the law enforcement authority that should be at the forefront of this interdiction effort is the Fisheries Department. Border activist Wil Maheia asserts that the Fisheries Department neglects that area of Belize's territorial seas.
Email
Print