A sweeping three-day joint operation carried out by Suriname’s Central Region police units and military forces has targeted unregulated illegal gold mining in the remote Sarakreek area, resulting in four suspects taken into custody and 10 illegal firearms seized, local law enforcement announced in late September.
Authorities had first issued an official eviction order to illegal miners operating in the region more than seven weeks prior to the crackdown. When the group failed to comply with the order to leave the protected area, security officials launched the coordinated large-scale intervention. Over the course of the operation, multiple temporary mining encampments used by the unauthorised prospectors were fully dismantled and cleared from the terrain.
During searches of the mining sites, security teams encountered multiple foreign nationals among the illegal operators, including citizens of Brazil and China. Preliminary investigation findings indicate these foreign miners were provided with logistical and navigational support by local Surinamese residents with intimate knowledge of the Sarakreek region’s terrain. In exchange for this assistance, the foreign prospectors agreed to cede between 10% and 20% of their total gold yields to their local facilitators, according to initial police accounts.
As of the initial announcement, law enforcement has not released full details on the total number of people encountered at the encampments or the exact number of mining locations cleared during the operation. The cache of seized firearms included a range of high-powered and personal weapons: two AR-15 assault rifles, five single-shot weapons, one five-shot hunting rifle, one Glock pistol, and one Roni carbine conversion rifle.
The four detained suspects have been transferred to the Central Region Criminal Investigation Department, which is continuing the ongoing investigation into the illegal mining ring and the origin of the seized weapons. Illegal gold mining has long been a persistent environmental and security challenge in Suriname’s interior rainforest regions, with unregulated prospecting causing widespread deforestation, mercury pollution of water systems, and the spread of unauthorised armed activity in remote border areas.