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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 16KB | 310 lines

<text> <title> Suriname: Human Rights Watch </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Americas Watch: Suriname </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments Political life in Suriname, which gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975, continues under the shadow of the February 25, 1980 military coup, led by Sergeant Desire Bouterse, and the December 8-10, 1982 execution of fifteen opponents of the regime. In overthrowing the civilian government, Bouterse, who became commander-in-chief of the army and assumed the rank of lieutenant colonel, suspended the Constitution and installed a succession of civilian figureheads as president. The executions, at military headquarters in the capital of Paramaribo, eliminated fifteen of the country's most prominent citizens. As a result of the killings, the Netherlands suspended its substantial aid program, and the United States ended the $1 million per year which it had been providing. The traumatic effect of the killings, which horrified Suriname's small, close-knit society, can be seen, in the view of many observers, in the later civilian government's lack of political will to exert control over the army. In 1987, a new Constitution was approved by the National Assembly and a popular referendum. Articles 177 and 178, which give the army the function of "guaranteeing the conditions in which the Surinamese people can carry out and consolidate a peaceful transition to a democratic and socially just society," have been cited by the military to justify a continuing presence in politics. Elections were held pursuant to the new Constitution in November 1987. Generally viewed as free and fair, the elections brought to power a civilian government dominated by a coalition of traditional ethnic-based parties, called the Front for Democracy and Development. The Front won forty of the fifty-one seats in the National Assembly, while the party affiliated with the military, the National Democratic Party (NDP), captured only three seats. Despite this decisive mandate, the Front government was widely perceived as corrupt and reluctant to confront the military. The army, still under Colonel Bouterse, retained de facto control of the country. In December 1990, ostensibly because the civilian president did not react strongly enough to what Colonel Bouterse perceived to be insulting treatment by the Dutch, the army once again overthrew the civilian government and installed an interim government. From 1987 to 1990, during the period of nominal civilian rule, the military engaged in numerous human rights abuses, both in the undeveloped interior and in Paramaribo, the capital. Violence in Paramaribo was directed particularly against members of the civilian police force who attempted to enforce the law against military personnel. These attacks included arson against police stations and drive-by shootings aimed at particular police officers. In August 1990, Police Inspector Herman Gooding was murdered under circumstances that strongly indicate military complicity, apparently in the course of investigating military involvement in narcotics. Violent abuses were most frequent in Suriname's interior. In various attempts to suppress an anti-Bouterse insurgency group called the Jungle Command, which formed following the 1980 coup, the army often launched harsh attacks against noncombatants. Military raids on villages in the interior resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths. Leaders of an Amerindian insurrection disappeared while in military custody in February 1990. The situation in the interior worsened with the emergence of several armed groups that purport to be insurgents but almost certainly are proxies of the military. These groups engage in indiscriminate killing and robbery of civilians. In January 1990, the largest and most active of the groups, the Tucayana Amazonas, held a televised press conference in Colonel Bouterse's office and threatened by name Police Inspector Gooding before his murder. Due to the fighting, thousands of Maroons (descendants of escaped slaves) and Amerindians have fled the interior to Paramaribo, other parts of Suriname, and neighboring French Guiana. Thousands of refugees are currently in camps in French Guiana. In July 1989, the Jungle Command reached a peace agreement with the civilian government. However, in an indication of the civilian government's relative power, Colonel Bouterse effectively shelved the agreement by denouncing it as unconstitutional. Although former elements of the Jungle Command insurgency are now allied with the army, with the remaining active insurgents mostly in French Guiana, Colonel Bouterse has cited a supposed continuing insurgent threat to justify an ongoing military presence in the interior. The presence facilitates military involvement in drug trafficking which, considerable evidence shows, has grown rapidly in the last three years. Because military personnel are exempt from the jurisdiction of the civilian police or courts, army traffickers, as well as military abusers of human rights, have enjoyed total impunity. On May 25, 1991, another election was held, amidst widespread popular doubts that elections would alter the balance of power. The Front, renamed the New Front, won thirty seats; the NDP, twelve seats; and a new opposition party, Democratic Alternative '91, nine seats. About sixty-four percent of the electorate went to the polls. Again, the election was found to have been essentially free and fair by the international observers in attendance, with little overt intimidation of the opposition during the campaign. However, Americas Watch found that the opposition politicians felt free to address the issue of civilian control of the military only tangentially, through the surrogate issue of whether to seek closer ties to the Netherlands. Because the National Assembly was unable to elect a president by the requisite two-thirds majority, the decision went to the People's Assembly, made up of the National Assembly and the various New Front-dominated regional assemblies. On September 6, the People's Assembly elected by an eighty-percent majority Ronald Venetiaan, a member of the New Front and the minister of education in the civilian government toppled by the 1990 coup. Venetiaan is regarded as honest and more forceful than the previous civilian president. Although newly elected members of the National Assembly belonging to Democratic Alternative have expressed the opinion that "nothing has changed," there has been some positive activity. Under Venetiaan, the government has announced its intention to cut the military's budget and to reorganize its functions, including transferring responsibility for immigration to the civilian police. In September, President Ventiaan addressed the United Nations, pledging to amend the Constitution "within the shortest possible time." A number of constitutional amendments, including revisions of Articles 177 and 178, have been proposed to the State Council, an advisory body with the role of reviewing legislation, but the amendments have not yet reached the National Assembly. In the same speech, President Ventiaan also pledged to fight drug trafficking. While few concrete steps have yet to be taken, Suriname in November signed a protocol of future cooperation with the Netherlands, which includes a provision for cooperation in fighting drug trafficking. The Dutch have agreed to restore some aid, including assistance to the judiciary and the police, with the rest of the aid conditioned on structural changes. The result of these pledges has been a growing tension between the army and the civilian government. Since the government has not yet acted on its announced intentions, it is uncertain to what degree the army will resist further incursions on its prerogatives. A