标签： Suriname

Thirty-two active member states of the Organization of American States (OAS) have collectively called on the United Nations Security Council to extend the mandate of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) deployed in Haiti, and to allocate the necessary personnel, funding, equipment, and logistical support to enable the force’s full operational deployment.

The joint statement, released publicly on September 25, reaffirms OAS member states’ support for the Haitian people, as well as their commitment to upholding Haiti’s sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity. It also underscores that long-term solutions to Haiti’s ongoing security and political crises must be led by Haitian stakeholders themselves.

The statement follows an official visit to Haiti led by OAS Secretary-General Albert R. Ramdin from August 16 to 19. Following the trip, Ramdin framed security improvements and the upcoming national elections as interconnected urgent priorities for the country. He emphasized that simply extending the GSF’s mandate would not be enough to address the crisis. “A mandate on its own does not deliver results,” Ramdin noted, arguing that the international intervention force must be given tangible resources to deliver the security outcomes that the Haitian public desperately needs.

Currently, the GSF faces a major deployment gap. During a UN Security Council meeting in July, it was reported that the GSF has an authorized troop strength of 5,500 personnel, but only roughly 1,000 troops had been deployed to Haiti as of that meeting. The Dominican Republic’s foreign minister warned at that July meeting that “logistical obstacles cannot be allowed to stand between the international community and the protection of an entire people.” The most recent September data from the UN Support Office in Haiti (UNSOH) puts the current deployed strength of the support mission at just under 1,600 personnel, with projections that this number will triple by the end of 2025.

The OAS joint statement outlines a clear set of core priorities for the GSF, including restoring legitimate state authority in territories currently controlled by armed gangs, securing uninterrupted access to Haiti’s airports and seaports, reopening critical transportation corridors, protecting civilian populations, and supporting the long-term reestablishment of the Haitian National Police in recaptured areas. The statement also calls for tangible progress in the process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of former gang members, and stresses that all GSF operations must comply fully with international humanitarian law and global human rights standards.

Haiti’s upcoming electoral timeline is already under significant strain. The first round of presidential and parliamentary elections is scheduled for December 13 this year, marking the first national elections held in the country since 2016. However, during his post-visit remarks in August, Ramdin expressed deep concern that with only three months remaining before voting, voter registration is severely behind schedule. After nearly one month of registration operations, only roughly 260,000 Haitians had successfully registered to vote, and many gang-controlled municipalities lack any functional registration centers entirely. Compounding these challenges, an estimated 1.47 million Haitians have been displaced by ongoing gang violence, creating major barriers to running an inclusive, accessible electoral process.

The UN Security Council is expected to hold discussions on extending the mandate of both the GSF and UNSOH by the end of September. In his remarks, Ramdin urged OAS member states and international partners to follow through on their existing commitments to Haiti. “Now is the time to scale up international support for Haiti, not draw it down,” he said.

On September 27, 2026, the Cultural Union of Suriname (CUS) held a national commemoration to celebrate the life, lifelong struggle, and enduring legacy of Janey Tetary, a 19th-century contract labor leader and symbol of resistance against colonial exploitation. The event opened with a floral tribute at Tetary’s monument in Paramaribo, followed by a historical documentary screening at the NSHI Ballroom exploring her trailblazing story. Organizers emphasized that the commemoration is not only a moment to reflect on the past, but also an opportunity to connect Tetary’s values of courage and justice to contemporary struggles for equality.

Born around 1856 in Moniar, Patna, in what was then British India (modern-day India), Tetary faced immense hardship from a young age. Divorced in early adulthood, a status that carried severe social and economic stigma for women in that era, she was lured to Suriname by recruiters’ promises of high-wage work abroad. In 1880, she arrived with her 10-year-old son to work as an indentured contract laborer on the Zorg en Hoop plantation along the Commewijne River.

On the plantation, Tetary earned the nickname “Begum,” meaning “noble woman,” for her relentless advocacy for better working and living conditions for fellow indentured workers. She openly challenged the abuse of women by their partners, protected vulnerable workers from exploitation, and prioritized support for pregnant laborers who were forced to complete grueling field work alongside managing household duties and childcare.

By 1884, the brutal conditions on Suriname’s plantages had reached a breaking point. Recruiters had promised workers a daily wage in India, but once they arrived in the colony, pay was restructured to a task-based system that left workers earning far less, with no pay at all if they failed to complete their punishing daily quotas. In September 1884, tensions boiled over into open rebellion. On September 24, a group of workers led by Tetary attacked a white colonial official with canes. When colonial authorities deployed soldiers to arrest the organizers, hundreds of workers armed with canes, bottles, and machetes organized to resist, with women fighting side-by-side with men under Tetary’s leadership.

Colonial commanders ordered a sniper to eliminate the rebellion’s leader. On September 26, 1884, as Tetary prepared to throw a mud-filled bottle at advancing soldiers, she was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range. She died two days later at just 28 years old. Six other indentured workers were also killed in the crackdown, and all seven were buried in an unmarked plot on the Zorg en Hoop plantation. The rebellion was crushed, but Tetary’s legacy as a fighter for justice lived on in oral history.

For more than a century, Tetary’s story was largely erased from official Surinamese history books, part of a broader pattern of colonial historical erasure. That began to shift in 2017, when a bronze statue of Tetary was unveiled on the grounds adjacent to the Presidential Palace in Paramaribo. The monument replaced a bust of Barnet Lyon, the colonial official held responsible for ordering Tetary’s killing.

The unveiling of the statue was widely hailed as a landmark moment in Suriname’s ongoing decolonization process. Then-Vice President Ashwin Adhin called the moment “a milestone in the process of full decolonization, particularly the decolonization of our thinking.” He accused colonial powers of “gross historical falsification” for covering up for 130 years that Tetary was shot dead while leading a peaceful protest for better working and living conditions on Lyon’s explicit orders. Sculpted by artist George Ramjiawansingh, the statue depicts Tetary with a raised hand gripping the neck of a bottle, capturing her defiant spirit and unyielding courage.

In recent years, Tetary’s legacy has gained recognition far beyond Suriname’s borders. In the Netherlands, which controlled Suriname as a colony until 1975, multiple public spaces have been named in her honor, including Janey Tetarypad in Scheveningen, The Hague. City officials in The Hague noted that naming public spaces after figures from former Dutch colonies helps build a more inclusive society and creates a more accurate reflection of shared national history. Streets have also been named for Tetary in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, part of a growing continental movement to confront colonial and enslavement histories, and honor contributions from communities long erased from mainstream historical narratives.

The Cultural Union of Suriname has long played a central role in advancing research on Tetary’s life and preserving her legacy for future generations. In his 2017 annual address, then-Surinamese President Desi Bouterse thanked the CUS and other partner organizations for their research and advocacy to “rectify this important chapter of history and immortalize it with this statue.”

With Sunday’s 2026 commemoration, the CUS continues that mission. CUS leadership noted that the event’s dual focus on reflecting on the past and connecting to the present underscores that the values Tetary fought for – courage, dignity, justice, and the willingness to stand up for marginalized people – remain just as relevant today as they were in 1884.

On September 28, new revelations from the ongoing Suriname Gold File investigation have brought a major case of alleged unauthorised gold mining into the spotlight, exposing deep regulatory gaps in the country’s lucrative but poorly governed mining sector.

Rosebel Gold Mines (RGM), a subsidiary of Chinese mining giant Zijin Mining, estimates that illegal gold extraction on two of its licensed concessions has caused roughly $138.3 million in cumulative damages to RGM, state-owned energy company Staatsolie, and the government of Suriname. According to RGM, the company has been formally notifying Suriname’s authorities about the unauthorised activity since January 2020, and now classifies the operation run by the little-known entity Overman Resource (including activities at the Pelin Bergi site) as one of the largest-scale gold mining operations in the entire country.

Despite the specific damage estimate provided by RGM, critical details of the case remain undisclosed, raising urgent questions about regulation and oversight in Suriname’s mining sector. Most notably, RGM has refused to name the actual individuals or entities that control Overman Resource, only referring to them as ambiguous “third parties.” The company also has not released verifiable data on the actual volume of gold extracted from the concessions, nor has it explained the methodological framework it used to arrive at the $138.3 million figure. That total includes lost revenue, profits and dividends for RGM and Staatsolie, as well as unpaid taxes, royalties and other government fees that the illegal operation failed to remit. Without supporting production data, independent observers cannot verify the accuracy of RGM’s damage calculation.

This case echoes a long-documented problem already revealed in previous installments of the Gold File investigation: paperwork listing mining rights and permits does not reflect who is actually operating on a given site, nor what natural resources are being extracted there. A previous analysis of government records submitted to the National Assembly found that near the Pikin Saron region, 29 separate permits for construction material extraction (mostly for savanna sand and laterite, with one permit covering sand, gravel and laterite) overlap with existing gold concessions. Government registries only show who holds legal rights to a site, not who is carrying out active extraction at any given time.

RGM’s account of the case adds further layers of uncertainty. The company confirms it has conducted on-site visits and monitored the illegal operation’s expansion for more than five years, but firmly denies that RGM or its parent company Zijin ever approved or sanctioned the activity. At the same time, the presence of vehicles linked to Zijin at the unauthorised mining site has sparked new questions that require further investigation. While the presence of these vehicles alone does not prove company complicity, investigators must clarify who owns the vehicles, who operated them, why they were present at the site, and who bore responsibility for their use.

The investigation also has uncovered a broader systemic loophole in Suriname’s mining regulation: many operations exploit a gap between permit classification and actual extraction, running large-scale gold mining under the cover of permits for sand, gravel or other construction materials. A previous Gold File report already documented this practice on the bed of the Suriname River, where gold extraction was carried out under a permit for river gravel extraction. Permits for construction materials do not grant legal authority to extract gold, so independent verification of on-the-ground activity is required at every site to confirm what resources are being extracted and where extracted gold is ultimately transported.

Beyond financial losses, RGM has warned of severe environmental risks from the illegal operation. The company says it first alerted authorities to the use of toxic chemicals in 2020, and internal laboratory tests conducted by RGM detected cyanide at the site. RGM adds that the operation is proceeding without any mandatory environmental impact assessment and has never received approval from Suriname’s National Environment Agency (NMA), which confirmed to RGM that it never issued a permit for the activity. Independent follow-up investigation is needed to confirm the presence of toxic chemicals, map their spread, and assess the damage they have caused to local water systems, soil and nearby communities.

The most pressing governance question raised by the case is how the operation was able to grow to its current massive size over more than five years, despite repeated notifications to Suriname’s government starting in 2020. After RGM observed the operation had expanded significantly, it sent another formal appeal to the responsible minister in October 2025, even proposing to convene a meeting of relevant authorities to coordinate enforcement action. Even so, the operation has not only continued but grown into one of the largest in Suriname, according to RGM. The company is now calling for immediate government intervention to develop a concrete action plan with regulatory agencies to permanently end the illegal activity.

This case shifts the core focus of the Gold File investigation: rather than only examining who holds mining rights on paper, the inquiry now centers on who is actually extracting gold, what is being extracted, who profits from unauthorised activity, and which agencies are responsible for oversight. Five key questions remain to be answered for the Overman Resource case: who are the actual operators, how much gold has been extracted, what data supports the $138.3 million damage estimate, what role does Zijin-linked equipment play in the operation, and why did authorities not shut the operation down despite years of notifications. The widespread practice of running gold extraction under construction material permits also requires further systemic review. At the end of the day, what matters for Suriname is not what is printed on a permit, but what is actually pulled from the country’s soil – and where the profits from that extraction end up.