Prominent Surinamese legal practitioner Derrick Veira has publicly leveled serious allegations against the Surinamese state, claiming authorities deliberately breached the 1991 Aliens Act by forcibly expelling a group of Mennonite residents from the country on a Saturday, even as an official presidential review petition regarding their residency status remained unresolved. The accusations, shared with local news outlet Starnieuws on October 31, come weeks after the Mennonite group was first displaced from their agricultural settlement in the Mazonia region and relocated to a temporary site in Kraka, Para District. Local police had previously identified the group as 63 people, including three infants, though exact figures for those expelled last Saturday have not been formally verified. Veira’s legal challenge is rooted in Articles 32 and subsequent clauses of the 1991 Aliens Act: Article 32 explicitly grants foreign residents the right to submit a presidential review request for decisions related to residency permits and expulsion orders, while Article 34 Section 1 mandates that no expulsion may be carried out before the relevant minister or the president has issued a formal ruling on a pending eligible review application. The lawyer confirmed that the Mennonite community’s review submission was formally acknowledged as received by the President’s Cabinet, which he argues created a binding legal obligation for authorities to pause all expulsion proceedings until a final presidential decision was released. Veira condemned the government’s conduct as “mafia-style”, noting that responsible cabinet officials bypassed the president’s explicit legal authority by moving forward with the expulsion without waiting for a ruling. He added that he received no advance notification from state authorities that the expulsion would be executed, even as he had been in communication with the judiciary up through the preceding Friday to arrange an interim enforcement order that would block the state from carrying out the expulsion ahead of a scheduled summary hearing set for November 2. With his clients already removed from Suriname, the original petition to halt the expulsion is now moot, prompting Veira to revise his legal submissions ahead of the Monday court date. He declined to share full details of the adjusted claims he will present, citing concerns that disclosing sensitive information about how he has remained in contact with his displaced clients could create additional risks for the group. It remains unclear as of press time whether the president has since issued a ruling on the Mennonite community’s original review petition.
Veira: Staat schendt Vreemdelingenwet bij uitzetting mennonieten; maffia-achtig bezig
