Jan. 15th deadline set for border evictions

More details have emerged regarding the eviction of several hundred illegal Guatemalan settlers who have set up communities inside of Belizean territory. Ambassador James Murphy, a member of Belize’s negotiating team, confirmed to News 5 that the two settlements along the border are being treated in a slightly different manner. The southernmost of the two, near Machaquila in Toledo’s Columbia River Forest Reserve, contains two hundred and twenty-one Guatemalans and lies one point eight kilometres east of the Guatemalan border. These squatters will be dealt with according to Belizean law and at three p.m. Friday will be presented with an order to leave the country. To insure that their rights are fully protected, an invitation has been made to the Human Right’s Commissions of both Belize and Guatemala to observe the process.

A second settlement, this one at Rio Blanco in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve, has been found to contain one hundred and four illegal Guatemalan settlers. Although Belizean officials are convinced that it too lies more than a kilometre from the border, Guatemalan officials maintain otherwise, and that country’s press has waged a vigorous campaign accusing Belize of aggressive intentions in the area. Because of the controversy the Belize government, as a goodwill gesture, has invited the two facilitators in the negotiating process, Sir Shridath Ramphal and Paul Reichler, to carry out a fact-finding mission to determine if the settlement is within the protection of the adjacency zone which extends one kilometre from the border, as outlined in the Belize-Guatemala agreement of November eighth. This fact-finding mission must be completed quickly as Belmopan has stated that by January fifteenth, unless the facilitators report otherwise, the settlers will be expelled from the country. The November eighth agreement provides for a set of procedures under which illegal cross border settlements can be dealt with in a peaceful and efficient manner.