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CENTRAL
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Guatemala Reasserts
Challenges To Belize’s Sovereignty
By Adele Ramos -
[email protected];
Amandala.com
Officials of Belize and Guatemala, including
a representative of the surveillance group
Comision de Belice, a department in the
Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held
a high-level meeting in Belize City, Belize,
earlier this, in the wake of flared tensions
along Belize’s western and southern border
with Guatemala.
The parties had agreed in December 2008 to
take the 150-year-old dispute to the
International Court of Justice (ICJ),
pending approval by their parliaments and
voters; however, on the first anniversary of
that festive signing, they were meeting in
Guatemala to discuss protests from
Guatemalan villagers, who were accusing
Belizean military of incursions into
Guatemala — allegations which Belizean
authorities have categorically denied.
Belize contends that because of the illegal
incursions by Guatemalans who come to cut
xaté and logs, and hunt wildlife inside
protected areas, an observation post was set
up at Machaquilha.
“The complaint from Guatemala about
militarization of the border came shortly
after the post was installed. The political
spin by Guatemala was that Belize installed
the outpost as a political strategy to
demarcate the border long ahead of the ICJ
resolution of the case,” said Alfredo
Martinez, Belize’s Ambassador resident in
Guatemala.
He told the Belize media on Wednesday at a
press briefing held in Belize City that as
the time for court draws near, Belize will
continue to see Guatemala challenge the
country’s sovereignty in an effort to help
its case before the court.
“We will continue to see challenges in
writing, because they are trying to document
for the court purpose — should we ever reach
there — that they did protest our
sovereignty. In other words, it’s just like
when you have a piece of land, a squatter,
you send that person a notice constantly:
‘Hey, come out of my land!’” said Ambassador
Alfredo Martinez.
In October 2009, Guatemalan villagers of El
Carrazal in Guatemala made official protests
to their government over the Machaquilha
observation post installed by Belize near
the western boundary with Guatemala. These
are not indigenous people, said Ambassador
Martinez. When they go to a restaurant, it’s
not their cell phone they put on the table —
it’s their gun!
The villagers called their Guatemalan
congressmen to complain, and the Guatemalan
Government, in turn, sent a diplomatic note
to Belize, questioning the installation of
the observation post on the Belize side of
the border.
Soon after the problems in the west, there
were problems in the south, at the Sarstoon
– a natural border between Belize and
Guatemala, with Belizean military conducting
regular patrols to Cadenas, near Gracias a
Dios Falls, marking Belize’s south-west
border with Guatemala.
The Guatemalan Armed Forces stopped Belize
Defence Force officers from using the
southern channel of the Sarstoon, which is
the southern boundary between Belize and
Guatemala, telling them to instead use the
northern channel, north of the Sarstoon
Island, which is included in Belize’s
territory, as defined under the 1859 Treaty
and the Belize Constitution.
The Guatemalan military had complained that
Belize military were speeding too much and
creating waves that were overturning the
canoes of these poor families who do
subsistence fishing in the area.
“We did not interpret that to be any
navigation challenge; we interpreted that —
and protested severely — that this was a
challenge to our sovereignty of using the
southern channel,” Martinez told the press.
He said that while the challenges at the
Sarstoon had stopped over the past two to
three weeks, and the Guatemalan military had
stopped intercepting the Belize military,
there was “a brief challenge last Tuesday.”
This came up on Tuesday at the High Level
Working Group meeting between Belize and
Guatemala as a point of discussion. “Belize
says it has to stop,” said Martinez.
On a visit to Guatemala last week, said
Martinez, Prime Minister Dean Barrow also
raised the concern with Guatemala president
Alvaro Colom, who reportedly assured that
things will return to normal.
For their part, the Guatemalans claim that
it is not a sovereignty issue, but we know
that that is not the case, Ambassador
Martinez maintained.
“But as we have pointed out to them, this
[challenge of Belize’s sovereignty] does not
help you any at all, because the
International Court of Justice, looks at
what happened before you signed that special
agreement,” said Martinez. “Anything after
the special agreement, the court will say,
they are just doing that, it won’t help you.
Why didn’t you do that show of sovereignty
before?”
In response to a flare-up out west over the
Machaquilha observation post, the parties
had met in Guatemala first and then later in
Washington at the Organization of American
States. It was coming out of this meeting
that Belize’s Foreign Affairs Minister
Wilfred Elrington commented, much to the
discontent of many Belizeans, that, “We have
to interact to emphasize the view that we
are not different from each other; the fact
of this artificial border does not make us
different. We are still the same people,
with the same aspirations and desires.”
When the Guatemalans first protested the
Belize observation post in October 2009,
Belize returned a diplomatic note, crafted
with the help of international lawyers, said
Ambassador Martinez.
The Confidence Building Measures, said
Martinez, say that the Guatemalans must
dissuade their people from coming over to
Belize illegally. “We don’t see them doing
that,” he declared.
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