B.D.F. Speaks on Border Incident at Camp Valentin

David Jones

On October third, the nation was shocked and outraged by news that Guatemalan villagers had confronted B.D.F. soldiers at Camp Valentin, a newly constructed conservation post. Those villagers had threatened to burn down the post, and apparently had come to make good on that threat. The volatile situation was defused by the soldiers, but it is a clear signal and the hostilities, and the danger, have been ratcheted up on the border. There was no official word on the incident by the B.D.F., just a press release, but on Friday Brigadier General David Jones spoke about the tense moment. He told the media that while the danger from the Guatemalans is real, N.G.O.s passing sensitive information to the media is making a bad situation much worse.

Brig. Gen. David Jones, Commander, Belize Defence Force

“Right after the incident occurred where the alleged forty Guatemalans went try and persuade the Belizean soldiers to try and go close to the border with Guatemala for a meeting with the Guatemalan forces. That information, when the soldiers got it they relayed it to headquarters….came to me and they asked for further direction. And very basic direction – it’s not going to happen. It’s not something official. I will never allow any soldier to follow any civilian to go and meet up with a Guatemalan patrol. It didn’t come across a military channel. It’s not the protocol. If they want to meet with us it will come through a normal channel. Then our soldiers will go and meet with them and have the discussion. But it was a typical, standard ambush that was going to happen to the soldiers. They had about twenty of them visit by the O.P. site, and a couple hundred metres away close to the bushes there was another twenty-five men with rifles, shotguns and machetes. Their intention was to lure the soldiers into an ambush. I was in a helicopter during that time. One of our N.G.O.s passed the information to me by cell phone while I was in the chopper and they asked if while I was in the area to fly over and try to dissuade the people from going closer. But as soon as that information had reached me we had reacted decisively because Incisive Gallop was on the ground, so we dispatched in excess of about fifty soldiers to that area immediately and they reached there very quickly because we had an operation there. But the person I relayed the message to passed the information to the media that I was in a helicopter about to fly over the area. That’s a basic, terrible security breach. It shouldn’t have happened.”

According to Jones the dissemination of that information put his life, and the lives of the others on board the chopper, in danger.