Guatemalans on Sunday voted overwhelmingly to send a centuries-old border dispute with neighboring Belize to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the Netherlands, for final resolution, preliminary referendum results showed.
A total of 95.89 percent voted “yes,” with votes from more than 92 percent of polling stations accounted for, Gustavo Castillo of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal said.
Polls closed at 6pm after 11 hours of voting, which took place “without reports of security incidents,” tribunal president Maria Eugenia Mijangos said.
However, despite 7.5 million Guatemalans being summoned to the ballot box, the vote was marked by a low turnout.
The border disagreement, the roots of which go back two centuries, has seen tensions spike from time to time. Two years ago, Guatemala mobilized 3,000 troops along the densely forested unmarked border zone after an incident in which a Guatemalan teenager was fatally shot.
A Belize border patrol officer had opened fire after being shot at, but an investigation by the Organization of American States found it not responsible for the death.
The two nations agreed in 2008 to send the dispute to The Hague-based ICJ if the people of both nations approved.
Observers from 25 nations were on hand to monitor the polling.
Belize has not yet fixed a date for its referendum on the issue, although officials say it could take place next year.
The Guatemalan plebiscite asked voters to respond “yes” or “no” as to whether any legal claims by Guatemala against Belize relating to its territories “should be submitted to the International Court of Justice for final settlement” and boundary determination.
Mijangos told reporters that voter apathy was a big risk. Efforts by Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales to boost turnout have foundered on the rocks of his low popularity.
“We are calling on all Guatemalans, especially the youth making up the majority of the electorate, to participate, to go to polling stations to put in their vote on this very important issue which has taken so many years to find a solution to,” Mijangos said.
Morales said as he voted that the two nations had “very good bilateral relations” and he hoped the dispute could be resolved.
Guatemala has made claims to over more than half of Belize’s territory, dating back to when its English-speaking neighbor was a British colony.
The border issue goes back to 1783, when Spain gave Britain the right to occupy the territory that became Belize and exploit its timber in exchange for combating piracy.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.