BTV Doesn’t Need O.A.S. Report to Prove They Didn’t Enter Guatemalan Waters

Immediately after BTV’s trek to the Sarstoon, the government of Belize, through the National Security Council, announced that they had been on top of things, monitoring the entire expedition – start to finish – with multiple agencies. But when met with multiple claims that Guatemala aggressed Belizeans in Belizean waters, Foreign Minister Elrington has been quoted as stating that G.O.B. must wait for a report from the O.A.S. to determine what happened at the Sarstoon. This morning Orlando de la Fuente and Wil Maheia, both leaders of the expedition on Sunday, were guests on Open Your Eyes, and they don’t need any report from the O.A.S. because they were there. De la Fuente outlined for us the path taken by the Belizean vessels around Sarstoon Island, maintaining that they were in Belizean waters at all times.

Orlando de la Fuente, Northern Territorial Volunteer

“We had our ceremony around here in a sandbar, about two hundred meters away from the coast; it’s only like knee-deep water. This is where…our idea was to, we had planned, after the ceremony, we had planned on entering the Sarstoon through here on the south bank because in a show of force, if we had enough boats, we would not have stopped to check in with the Guatemalan military. Unfortunately, as we were pulling out here, this is where the blockade and all the fiasco started and this is where they tried to prevent us from accessing the Sarstoon. And by the time we did make it through these Guatemalan vessels, I found myself on the North Channel.”

Orlando de la Fuente

Marleni Cuellar

“So that’s when you broke away from where they were intercepting you and you went north?”

Orlando de la Fuente

“Once we broke through, then the Guatemalan vessels stayed to my left. They stopped trying to block us and ram us and they just went alongside us. But anytime I tried to go over to the South Channel, then they’d speed up. Then I decided as long as they are staying here and not pushing us anymore into Belize, into our own waters and preventing us from accessing the island, then that’s okay. So we continued here and navigated around here. I instructed the captains to stay on the left half, on our half of the river. So we went pretty close to the shores of the island here and eventually when we passed their military base then it got easier and we came here and we meet another group.”