There is a shadowy group in Belize called the National Security Council. It is a shadowy group because representatives of the British and American governments sit on this council, and our Belizean system of government cannot expose to the people of Belize how frail, or perhaps even bogus, our independence and sovereignty are.

During the couple months of SIS-related uproar to which I refer, I got the best look I?ve ever gotten at the National Security Council, and it wasn?t that much of a look, trust me. But for the first time in my life I could see through the veils and curtains surrounding the NSC, and just for getting a glimpse, we received serious, anonymous threats back here.

I feel that there is a huge difference between newspapers and radio stations where the people who are involved with Belize?s ?security? are concerned. This matter of Belize?s security, on the day to day, bureaucratic level, has little to do with Guatemala?s claim to Belize, for instance. It has more to do with how domestic law and order are maintained, how the local population is kept in a pacified state.

Radio stations are much more dangerous than newspapers where this domestic security is concerned, because in Belize newspapers take days to publish a news story. Radio can broadcast a breaking story immediately, right now! Radio is hot.

So the people, both PUP and UDP, who were in charge of making sure that Belizeans remained quiet and submissive, had a problem with allowing for a non-government radio station to exist. They did not have a problem with allowing the British forces in Belize to have their own radio station, because the British forces were not a threat to security. In fact, the British were actually part of the local security forces, even though we were ?independent.? Still, there was a contradiction here.

And it was this contradiction that created the opening for KREM Radio. In 1979, the new PUP government we had helped to elect, rejected Partridge Street?s request for a radio licence. In 1984, the new UDP government we had helped to elect, rejected Partridge Street?s application for a radio licence. But the British forces were broadcasting on Belize?s airwaves from their camp at Ladyville. How this came about, no Belize government has ever discussed, and when it started, I can?t say for sure.

Anyway, I threatened to start broadcasting from Partridge because there was already a private radio station in Belize ? the British! This was around June or July 1989. The UDP were in power, and general elections were due. The UDP promised to lock us up, and the PUP saw political opportunity in the situation. They supported Radio AMANDALA, as the 1989 idea was called.

But after the PUP won the September 1989 general elections, the Radio AMANDALA idea got out of my personal control to a substantial extent. I believe that at some point the British and/or the Americans explained to the Belize government how much of a security risk they thought a radio station in the hands of people with a reputation for black militancy could be. So the PUP realized that they had to ?mash down? the very radio station they had helped to create, the same radio station the idea of which had, in effect, helped to return them to power.

Remember now, all we wanted was free radio for Belizeans in the city. We had no sense of the security concerns at the macro level. One of our shareholders, the late Rodolfo Silva, the man whose radio engineering had put KREM Radio on the air on November 17 of 1989, quickly wanted to broadcast nationally. He was supported in this ambition by our general manager at the time, C.B. Hyde, and the other shareholders. I went along, reluctantly.

Silva set up a KREM broadcast antenna at Baldy Beacon, which is one of the highest points in the Mountain Pine Ridge. Baldy Beacon is where all the national and regional broadcast communications equipment is located for the military, the police, civil aviation, all the big time players about whom roots Belizeans know little. British Army personnel ran over and mangled Silva?s Baldy Beacon equipment, and told us it was an ?accident.?

I?ve never personally been in charge of KREM Radio where management was concerned. The station was subsidized from 1989 to 1998 by Amandala Press. I stayed at Amandala to make sure we made enough money to keep KREM on the air. I was always puzzled by the Baldy Beacon incident, not to mention angry. But I was losing money at KREM. I couldn?t pay it as much attention as I had to pay the newspaper.

In February of 1998, when a sophisticated attempt was made to bring down KREM?s main broadcast tower in the residential area of Partridge Street, the first and obvious suspect had to be the UDP. The leaders of the UDP were so hostile to KREM Radio they could not even bring themselves to express regret about the incident, which endangered innocent civilians, including children, in the neighbourhood. But because of what I had learned about ?national security? in late 1989, and because of the Baldy Beacon incident, I?ve never publicly accused the UDP of the cold-blooded act of sabotage in February of 1998. I don?t know if the UDP have saboteurs who operate at that level. If they do, Belize is an even more dangerous place than I believed it was.