7 News Belize

The Guat Plot Against Plett
posted (May 17, 2016)
And as we told you last night, there is a lot to investigate. Roger Plett says that on Thursday, he was working near the Belize Guatemala border in the Green Hills Area when uniformed Guatemalan civilians accompanied by about 20 persons appearing to be in military apparel - kidnapped him from the Belize side, took him over to Guatemala. They tied him up, took his tractor, and also commandeered his co worker's bulldozer.

It's quite a story, and here are some more elements which we didn't have time to include last night:...

Jules Vasquez reporting
Under the canopy, in the underbrush, with only the din of crickets to bear witness, lies a row of Belize Guatemala border markers - just like this one, on a cleared path every quarter mile.

Today Roger Plett will only look at it from afar, but he won't dare go near here again.

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"Absolutely I am afraid to go back to that area again. It is Belizean territory; I should not be afraid to go anywhere in Belize but I am because they come into the Belize side to harass us."

The reason for the harassment is this fire - on the ground yesterday - we saw only the haze of smoke, the after burn, but last week Thursday the fire was roaring - it had been going on for days and the entire landscape was smothered in a blanket of smoke vast acreages smoldering, punctuated only by fiery rings.

That's why the Guatemalans wanted this bulldozer to clear the land and flatten the fire. And while they did use the bulldozer - they abused this tractor, apparently deliberately destroying it, even snapping off the steering wheel:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"I believe they broke the machine up as much as they could out of anger that the fire had crossed into their side. Now they were trying to find some way to, I guess in a sense, you can say hurt the owner of the land."

And Plett says their anger is misdirected because the fire did not come from the Belize side:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans "In truth, we did not set that fire there, our fire was contained. This was another fire that started further down south."

Still, Plett was kidnapped, tied up and threatened by persons he is sure were Guatemalan soldiers:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"Then I heard in the background a next person saying 'let's tie him up and let's rough him up a little'. So the lighter skin guy in charge, he told the military to tie my hands behind my back. There was a good amount of them that were armed. I recognized they had machine guns, the guy in charge had a machine gun and a next weapon in a holster by his chest area. Each soldier had a machete, each machete had a name on it. They had a rank on this side here, I saw an arrow pointing up on their right shoulder. We have been working there for many years and this is not the first time that we have seen the Guatemalan military come into the Belizean side. This is a reoccurring thing, this is just the first time that they managed to get a hold of me and tie me up."

But, the Cayo police aren't convinced and suggest that they are making it up:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"When we went in to the police station to give the report, I started telling him my story and after a while the guy who was taking my story went out of the room. I waited a good while there and when he came back in it's like he didn't want to hear my story anymore. He was trying to twist the story, trying to make me change the story."

But, he didn't and police haven't even gone to the area to investigate- if they did, they would see bulldozer tracks like this going straight over into Guatemala:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"Well I would expect them to go to the area and they will clearly see the bulldozer tracks."

Leading Plett with only one conclusion:

Roger Plett, Farmer Detained by Guatemalans
"From there I told them 'you guys are cowards; you guys are scared of the Guatemalans that is why you want to sweep this under the rug as if it never happened."

And what do police have to say? Well, nothing yet - or maybe nothing at all! The Officer in charge of Cayo, Superintendent Richard Rosado told us the police press officer would send us a statement, but when we reached him, he told us that the Ministry would be sending a statement. Up to newstime, nothing had arrived.

The story was also reported in the Prensa Libre where they say that a conservation NGO named "Esfuerzo" blamed the Mennonites for Illegal logging in the Adjacency Zone. They claim that a fire which the Mennonites started posed a threat to the Peten Forest.

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