Last night we told you about SATIIM's Sarstoon showdown with the Guatemalan Navy. The Indigenous NGO which used to co-manage the Sarstoon Temash National Park, reported that the Guatemalan military showed aggression and attempted to stop them from entering the Sarstoon River.
They were on a patrol of the southern portion of the National Park, but when they entered the Mouth of the Sarstoon, the SATIIM Rangers reported to the BDF soldiers what they intended to do. They believed that, since they had been given the nod from the BDF soldiers based at the Sarstoon Forward Operating Base, they were in the clear to conduct their patrol. SATIIM says that they've haven't been stopped by the Guatemalan Navy from entering the Sarstoon on patrol duty for the past 10 years, and so they had no reason to believe that Tuesday's trip would be different. SATIIM says they when they entered this time, however, the Guatemalans intercepted them, and attempted to stop their passage through the river, if they did not first stop in at the Guatemalan military base, which is right across the river from the BDF's base.
For the NGO, it's an alarming flashpoint, and for regular citizens it's another sign of Guatemalan military aggression at Belize's southern boundary. Today, when we caught the Prime Minister at another event in Belmopan, he gave us his comments on the worrying incident:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
"All I will say is I'm not surprised. We've said to the public that the Guatemalans are clearly taking a new and absolutely aggressive stance with respect to the Sarstoon. We have to continue to maintain that we are sovereign over our portion of Sarstoon and that therefore if the documentation offered by Sarstoon is accurate, what the Guatemalans have done is wrong and we must protest it diplomatically. We cannot allow for any suggestion to arise that we are sleeping on our rights. But of course, how do we assert those rights? By protesting, by letting the international community know and by trying finally to engaged the Guatemalans, so that we might be able to work out some sort of a protocol. There was to have been a meeting tomorrow between our two foreign ministers with the Leader of the Opposition's representative as part of the Belize team, but the two foreign ministers principally, Foreign Minister Elrington and Foreign Minister Carlos Raul Morales and the two generals, the respective heads of the Guatemalan and Belize armed forces. That meeting had to be put off because the two generals are attending a forum or conference that I think the US is sponsoring that might be part of the whole Central American security picture. But I expect then that that meeting will be able to occur perhaps next week. Not too long from the postponed date of tomorrow. It gives me a chance to say again that in terms of this sort of an issue we keep our friends the American completely briefed. We know that they have to play the role of honest broker."
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