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When Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez spoke publicly on Friday, her message required no complex translation for the local audience. In the presence of senior Surinamese government officials, she announced in Spanish (with an official translation provided) that 200 Venezuelan fishermen from the states of Nueva Esparta and Sucre would soon receive official permits to operate in an Atlantic fishing corridor designated by Suriname. What nobody in the official delegation seemed to anticipate, however, was that this offhand announcement would spark immediate uproar across Suriname’s fishing sector.

This public backlash is far from surprising. Fishing access permits are far from a trivial administrative matter: for years, Suriname and neighboring Guyana have been locked in bitter public disputes over fishing rights, with tensions escalating to diplomatic standoffs and cross-border political accusations. That is precisely why Suriname’s government had an obligation to lay out all details of its new agreement with Venezuela clearly and proactively from the start. That obligation was never met.

It was only after Rodríguez’s comments were published by local outlet Starnieuws and public outcry erupted that Suriname’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries released a full explanation. Officials clarified that the 200 permits are not for brand new fishing vessels entering Suriname’s waters – instead, they apply to Venezuelan boats that have been operating illegally in Surinamese territory for years. Even with this clarification, a critical question remains: why was this key context not shared immediately when Rodríguez made her announcement?

The roots of this confusion stretch back to 2007, when the original bilateral fishing agreement between the two countries was first signed. That agreement has not been updated or renewed in the 19 years since it came into force. Parveen Amritpersad, director of Suriname’s fisheries department, confirmed that this lapse means there has been no formal bilateral legal framework in place to authorize foreign fishing vessels accessing Suriname’s waters for nearly two decades.

Over those 19 years, four consecutive Surinamese administrations – the Venetiaan III cabinet, the Bouterse I and II terms, and the current Santokhi government – all failed to renew the expired agreement. Venezuelan authorities also did not push forward to resolve the gap in the framework. Despite the lack of formal legal standing, fishing operations continued uninterrupted: under Suriname’s domestic rules, permits were issued through local processing companies that held private contracts with the Venezuelan vessels, even as the required bilateral treaty remained expired.

An expired agreement is an expired agreement. By the same logic, a driver cannot argue that an expired driver’s license is still valid just because they held a valid one years ago. To make the urgency of this gap even clearer, the European Union has already flagged the lack of formal legal framework to Suriname, and recommended that the country resolve the issue as a matter of priority. This new agreement, therefore, is far from a meaningless bureaucratic formality: it is intended to fix an irregular situation that has persisted for nearly two decades.

So who is to blame for the current confusion? Rodríguez did not make her comments in an off-the-record private meeting; she spoke as Venezuela’s acting head of state during an official state visit. If her wording created a misleading impression, Suriname’s government could have immediately stepped in to clarify: that there are no new boats entering the corridor, and the deal simply renews the long-expired 2007 framework for the existing fishing arrangement. If that clarification had come immediately, there would have been barely any controversy at all.

Instead, clarification only came after Rodríguez’s comments were published and public anger grew. Worse, official communications framed the controversy as a response to “recent misleading reporting”, which created the easy but unfair impression that local outlet Starnieuws had spread inaccurate information.

That accusation is unfounded. Any outlet that accurately quotes Rodríguez’s public comments cannot be blamed for the resulting backlash. If her statement was incomplete or poorly phrased, the responsibility to correct and clarify immediately fell to the Surinamese officials who were present for the announcement.

This means Suriname’s government and its communications team need to examine their own mistakes first. A sensitive deal like this requires full transparency from the start. The public deserves clear answers to basic questions: how many vessels will be permitted, what type of permits will they receive, what areas are they allowed to fish in, what terms govern their operations, and why did it take 19 years to renew an expired bilateral agreement?

Trying to shift blame for the public commotion to the media, when clear official information was not provided in advance, is hypocrisy. It is a positive step that Suriname is finally bringing this 19-year-old irregular situation into compliance with the law. But transparency should not be an afterword that only comes out when controversy erupts.

In the fishing industry, catch traceability is a non-negotiable requirement. The same standard should apply to government information: the public has a right to know what agreements are reached, where information comes from, and whether official public statements align with the actual terms of deals. In this case, the public was forced to piece together the facts after the fact, and the entire situation leaves a distinctly fishy taste.

On a Monday visit to the Tibiti region of Suriname’s Para district, a delegation led by opposition NDP Members of Parliament Rabin Parmessar and Jennifer Vreedzaam, accompanied by journalists, security personnel and environmental activist Erlan Sleur, uncovered a tangled, conflicting land dispute that has left a group of Mennonite immigrants from Belize in legal and existential limbo.

After initial attempts to communicate through German and Spanish fell flat, the group was able to speak with Peter Petersen, a Mennonite community representative who speaks both English and Spanish. What began as a routine fact-finding trip quickly revealed a chasm between what the Mennonites were promised before relocating and the legal reality on the ground in Suriname.

Petersen told the delegation that his community had been invited to settle in the Para district by local agents Ruud Soeverein and Lionel Blokland, who assured the group that sufficient land was available for large-scale agricultural development. Acting on these promises, the entire community sold all of their property and businesses in Belize, shipped heavy farm machinery to Suriname, and invested significant time and capital clearing the Para district land for cultivation. Work has been paused for months, however, as the Mennonites wait for promised official government permits to resume operations, according to Petersen.

The delegation delivered a shocking revelation to Petersen that the community had never been informed of: the land the Mennonites have already invested in is state-owned domain land that was previously granted as a logging concession to Bruynzeel. Logging operations on the site were halted years ago to allow the native forest to regenerate, and the entire parcel falls within legally recognized Indigenous traditional residential and subsistence territory. Most critically, a court eviction order has already been issued ordering the Mennonite group to vacate the land – a document the community says it never received.

Petersen explained that the group agreed to pay $150 USD per hectare for the land, with the current Para site slated to cover more than 9,000 hectares, planned for large-scale production of corn, soy, livestock feed and meat for commercial markets. This is just the first phase of the community’s planned relocation: the two additional Mennonite settlement sites would require three to four times more land, with around 30 Mennonite families already residing in Suriname’s capital Paramaribo, and more than 100 additional families waiting to move once the land situation is resolved.

The delegation clarified that Surinamese government policy restricts large-scale agricultural development to suitable lands along the coastal plain, not in the inland forested territories that hold sensitive ecological and Indigenous land rights claims. Indigenous and tribal land rights have remained one of the most intractable policy issues facing successive Surinamese governments and parliaments for decades, adding an extra layer of complexity to the dispute.

By the end of the site visit, it was clear that two entirely separate narratives about the settlement existed with no overlap. On one side, the Mennonite community acted in good faith on promises they received, liquidating their old lives abroad to build a new future in Suriname. On the other, the land is already claimed by Indigenous communities, protected for forest regeneration, and the settlement was never approved by any competent government authority.

During the visit, Parmessar contacted Lionel Blokland, one of the agents who arranged the settlement, by phone, and secured a commitment that Blokland will provide official documentation of all agreements made with the Mennonites to the Surinamese National Assembly. These documents will be critical to clarifying the exact terms of the deal, which lands were promised, the nature of the $150 per hectare payment, and who had the authority to make these commitments in the first place.

When the delegation departed the site, they left behind more open questions than they arrived with, and Petersen remains stuck in limbo, still waiting for the official permits he was promised, unaware until the visit that an eviction order was already issued against his community. The delegation, which had set out to investigate allegations of illegal settlement activity, returned to Paramaribo that evening stunned and uncertain, with far more questions about the controversial Mennonite settlement than answers.