Guatemala Responds to CARICOM Release on Sarstoon Incident

Still on the issue of the Sarstoon, Guatemala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has responded fast and furious to a release from the CARICOM Secretariat in which the region expresses support for Belize in the backdrop of the recent incursions in the Sarstoon by the Guatemalan Armed Forces. The GAF blocked the Belize Territorial Volunteers and acted hostile and threatening on March twelfth, 2016. CARICOM made the point that while the GAF claimed that the Sarstoon belongs to them, the mid channel of the river is the agreed border between Guatemala and the UK long before Belize became an independent nation in 1981. In a response dated March eighteenth, Guatemala is reiterating its so-called sovereignty over the Sarstoon. The Guatemalan release makes the following three points which we quote: First, the government of Guatemala re-affirms that the Sarstoon is Guatemalan territory. Second, Guatemala reiterates that there was no provocation by its authorities toward the crew of a Belizean vessel and instead they were only requested to follow the usual security protocols implemented in the Sarstoon. Third, in relation to what CARICOM says is the “southern border of Belize,” the Government of Guatemala reiterates that it has denounced the 1859 boundary treaty between Britain and Guatemala with respect to “British Honduras” due to what it claims was a breach of clause seven of the treaty by Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That treaty’s expiration was renounced by Guatemala’s Congress, via decree number two hundred and twenty-four on April ninth, 1946. And lastly, it re-affirms that it will continue to exercise sovereignty over the Sarstoon River until the territorial, insular and maritime differendum between the countries is resolved before the International Court of Justice.