SURINAME: Ex-Strongman Apologises for 1982 Massacre

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Mar 29 2007 (IPS) - If it can muster enough evidence in the coming months, Suriname’s multiparty coalition government says it hopes to both charge and win convictions against former coup makers for the 1982 massacre of more than a dozen people.

Last December marked 25 years since soldiers brutally executed a group of 15 people, including journalists, academics, clergymen and labour leaders, at a colonial-era fort right next to the presidential compound in the capital.

The 15 died because the then military government, led by former strongman Desi Bouterse, had accused them of conspiring with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to destabilise a military-led government that toppled the elected Henk Aaron administration in February 1980.

The executions sent massive shockwaves through the neighbouring Caribbean Community and the rest of the hemisphere. Until then, Suriname had been a relatively quiet and stable former Dutch colony on South America’s Caribbean coast.

Five years earlier, in November 1975, it had won independence from the Netherlands and secured a meaty package of development aid worth nearly three billion dollars over 15 years. The country was sitting pretty, and only had to deal with racial insecurities between Blacks and East Indians, and to move to exploit its vast gold, timber and other natural resources.

But in the months leading up to February 1980, soldiers in the national army began feuding with authorities over better pay and working conditions. They wanted a labour union to represent them and railed against other societal ills like corruption.

The row boiled over into the first of two coups – the second executed by a telephone call from army headquarters on Christmas Eve in 1990 – and the eventual ouster of the administration.

Key infrastructure installations like the main radio station were destroyed and the nation was left traumatised. Many Surinamese who had not followed their neighbours, friends and relatives in migrating to The Netherlands had second thoughts and headed to the airport.

Between 1980 and the executions of Dec. 8 two years later, the military-led government had struggled to keep the country on an even keel, fighting with labour unions and civil society groups in quiet rebellion against the coup and new rulers.

Eventually, the leaders bowed to growing international pressure to organise free and fair elections in 1987 that returned the country to democracy. But by then, the once prosperous economy, largely driven by bauxite exports, had virtually crumbled.

In recent weeks, the Ronald Venetiaan administration, which has vowed “to bring justice to the victims”, has given strong indications that it intends to try to prosecute Bouterse and others it thinks are responsible for events back then. This is the only way of closing what officials say is a gaping moral wound in the society of 480,000 people.

For his part, Bouterse, leader of the parliamentary opposition and head of the National Democratic Party (NDP), Suriname’s largest single party, is preparing to mount a strenuous defence to any charges that may stem from 1982 – even as he saw it fit to apologise at a public forum in the capital Paramaribo recently.

“I am apologising to all the surviving relatives,” he told a youth rally last month to mark the 27th anniversary of the coup, adding that he wants the national community to be part of an effort to “seek the truth of that dark chapter in Suriname’s history”. He has insisted that the current portrayal of events is incorrect and is anxious to tell his side fully.

In his address, Bouterse called for amnesty for the coup-makers, arguing that such treatment was meted out to rebels in the interior who had staged destabilising guerilla raids against the administration in the 1980s. One such leader he named was his former bodyguard turned anti-government rebel Ronnie Brunswijk, who is now, like Bouterse, a member of parliament. Brunswikj’s Maroon-supported party in the east near French Guiana won four seats in the general elections two years ago.

Officials have largely ignored Bouterse’s calls for amnesty. The Court of Justice is reviewing evidence and affidavits from several suspects, including Bouterse, to determine who should stand trial. Once the review is completed, a military court is expected to try the 20 suspects under scrutiny later this year.

Bouterse, who was also convicted in absentia in the Netherlands for cocaine-trafficking in 1999, has always said he was “politically responsible” as military commander but has denied giving orders to execute the 15. He calls the charges trumped up.

If the 1982 murders aren’t enough cause for anxiety, remnants of the military government remain under pressure for the 1986 massacre of 52 people at Moiwana Village near French Guiana, when the military chased after rebels allegedly fighting government soldiers.

Two years ago, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the current government to pay 130 survivors of the massacre more than three million dollars for their pain and suffering at the hands of the military.

“The government of Suriname had made it a priority to conduct in-depth investigations into a series of human rights violations that had taken place under the previous military regime,” said the court as it ruled on the case.