Ernesto Vasquez Tells Of Run-In With Guat Navy; G.O.B. Tight-Lipped on SATIIM Intervention

Ernesto Vasquez

The Guatemalan Armed Forces continue to operate freely in the area of the Sarstoon River, within Belizean territory. Ernesto Vasquez, who works out of the office of the Prime Minister and is a co-host of Love FM morning show, confirmed to News Five his recent experience in the area. He visited the Cadenas post, run by the Belize Defence Force, last week Tuesday as part of a tour of Belize’s boundary markers. According to Vasquez, the tour forms part of his personal research into the nature and origins of the Guatemalan claim. While with a B.D.F. escort in Belizean waters, Vasquez told us, a Guatemalan armed forces vessel met them in the river and began to follow them out toward the mouth of the river where Belize’s Forward Operating Base sits. There was no attempt at communication and B.D.F. personnel who accompanied Vasquez confirmed that this is standard operating procedure by now for the G.A.F. Vasquez’s research, he explained, is to help him become versed and contribute to the national discussion on the claim. This incident follows one reported eleven days ago on November tenth, when a patrol vessel owned by the Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management carried its personnel and village leaders of Crique Sarco and Graham Creek on a routine community forest patrol on the Sarstoon River, looking for signs of deforestation and illegal activities. They ran into a Guatemalan Armed Forces naval patrol vessel that stopped them as they traversed the Sarstoon. According to a press release from the Ministry of Defence at the time, Belizean authorities are following up with Guatemalan counterparts to get clarification on this recent incident in the Sarstoon. News Five tried to reach Commandant of the B.D.F., Brigadier General David Jones, for an update on the nature of that follow-up today, but he was unavailable. We spoke to C.E.O. in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lawrence Sylvestre, this evening and he confirmed that the ministry has received the B.D.F.’s statement from SATIIM containing their version of events. But C.E.O. Sylvestre would only say that in circumstances like these, they would follow up with the Guatemalans, and that any response they got would be kept confidential.