The Suriname Police Corps has issued a formal eviction notice ordering all individuals residing without valid legal permission in the remote Masonia region of Sipaliwini district to vacate the area by 8:00 a.m. local time on Friday, October 23, 2026. Among the unauthorized settlements in the area is a Mennonite community camp, which independent environmental research has confirmed sits outside of any officially granted logging concession boundary. While the police notice does not single out the Mennonite group specifically, it explicitly warns that if voluntary departure does not occur by the deadline, police will coordinate with the Suriname National Army to carry out forced eviction operations.
The discovery of the unauthorized camp traces back to field investigations led by Erlan Sleur, chair of the Suriname environmental nonprofit ProBios. For months prior to his September 30 site visit, Sleur received repeated public reports of Mennonite settlers moving heavy industrial logging equipment into intact forest areas in the region. Initially, Sleur’s investigation focused on deforestation activity within a 50,000-hectare logging concession linked to local businessman Roy Kong Yong Foek.
During the on-the-ground inspection, however, Sleur uncovered a large, established camp in an unlicensed section of the forest far from the official concession boundaries. Cross-referencing his field observations with satellite imagery and official forestry boundary data from the Suriname Foundation for Forest Management and Forest Control confirmed the entire camp and adjacent cleared areas fall outside both Foek’s concession and all other registered approved concession areas. Drone imagery captured by Sleur documented extensive cleared forest plots, permanent structures, and multiple heavy logging machines operating on the unlicensed land.
In conversations with Sleur, a Mennonite representative identified as Jacobus explained the community of 12 Bolivian Mennonite families had reached a private agreement with Foek, and trusted that he would secure all necessary legal permits for their settlement and economic activity. Sleur informed the settlers of the legal objections to their presence and provided them with a Spanish translation of a court-ordered eviction summons that was first issued back in July. At that time, the initial summons demanded the group vacate the area, but no concrete enforcement deadline was set until the police’s formal October 15 notice.
Suriname police have emphasized that the newly issued eviction notice is a formal, legally valid and binding official notification. If the area is not fully cleared by the October 23 deadline, joint police and army units will proceed with enforced eviction operations to remove all unauthorized occupants and their property from the Masonia region.