Human rights group wants Netherlands charged for 1980 coup in Suriname
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| Published on Tuesday, March 24, 2009 |
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By Ivan Cairo
Caribbean Net News Suriname Correspondent
Email: ivan@caribbeannetnews.com
PARAMARIBO, Suriname; A human rights group in the Netherlands is investigating whether it is possible to sue the Netherlands before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its alleged role in a February 1980 military coup in Suriname, which toppled the democratic elected Henck Arron-administration.
The move comes after a former Dutch ambassador to Suriname confirmed last week that the then military attaché of the Netherlands in Suriname was the mastermind behind the coup, which brought Desi Bouterse to power. Meanwhile an opposition lawmaker has submitted a letter to the Dutch government requesting the Balkenende-administration to release classified documents regarding this issue.
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| Desi Bouterse |
Speaking Sunday on Dutch radio, Romeo Hoost, chairman of the Committee for the Remembrance of Victims in Suriname, said that his organization with its lawyers is exploring whether the Netherlands could be charged before the ICJ for its alleged role in the successful coup.
The committee is mainly representing relatives of murdered opponents of the then military regime in Suriname. On December 8, 1982, fifteen opponents of the Bouterse administration were rounded up by the military and subsequently executed in Fort Zeelandia in Paramaribo by a firing squad.
By instigating the military take-over, according to Hoost, Colonel Valk violated the national sovereignty of Suriname. Hoost further noted that the Suriname government should charge Bouterse also since he had agreed to be a willing instrument for the Netherlands to overthrow the then government.
Bouterse and 15 other army soldiers who staged the coup were granted amnesty in 1980.
Ex-ambassador Max Vegelin van Claerbergen, in the TV programme ‘Andere Tijden’ on the NPS public channel, said on Thursday that he was aware that then military attaché Colonel Hans Valk had frequent contact with Bouterse to persuade him to overthrow the government.
Since his successful coup on February 25, 1980, Bouterse has vehemently denied any Dutch involvement, claiming it was a nationalistic act of the army in order to restore deteriorating popular faith in the government.
If the ex-ambassador’s claims are true, said Socialist Party MP Harry van Bommel, this meant the coup had been staged with the knowledge and even consent of the government of Netherlands.
In the TV programme, a former Dutch intelligence officer who investigated the activities of the military mission including the alleged role of Colonel Valk in 1980, were also interviewed. According to Major Koen Koenders, he submitted a report over the colonel’s involvement in the coup to his superiors.
However, the report was discarded as containing only gossip and hearsay by an official in the ministry of Defence in The Hague and put away in a drawer.
"The coup would never have happened. Without the help they wouldn't have had the capacity to succeed," Major Koenders said on Thursday on television. He believes that his report was kept secret "because a country can never admit that it was involved in the overthrow of a foreign government."
His comments were being supported by ex-ambassador Vegelin van Claerbergen. "It would be insupportable to the Dutch way of thinking that a very democratic, ‘soft' country would go and topple another democracy in another country. Of course that couldn't be,” said the ex-diplomat, who was interviewed in his home in Paris, France.
In 1983 the Dutch parliament launched an investigation into the role of the Netherlands in the Bouterse coup, but the findings then did not lead to any legal actions against the Dutch government.
Currently, Bouterse, who ruled Suriname from 1980 until 1987, and 24 other co-suspects are standing trial in Paramaribo for the extra-judicial killing in December 1982. Last week Friday a former soldier testified before a military court that Bouterse was present in Fort Zeelandia when the 15 victims were killed.
Ex-soldier Evert Vrede disclosed that before the men were executed they appeared before a tribunal existing of Bouterse and two other top army officers and subsequently shot by a firing squad including mainly bodyguards of Bouterse and the now deceased garrison commander Roy Horb.
Vrede said he was ordered to assist in wrapping several bodies into tenting material the day after the killings before they were delivered to the city morgue. | | | | Reads : 1377 | | | |
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