The verdict against Desi Bouterse is about ten minutes old when the discussion on Radio Mart starts. “I find it strange that he is still walking around freely,” says Peggy Burke, former PvdA councilor in Amsterdam and until recently worked in the House of Representatives for Bij1. “I actually wonder: will there still be a punishment?”
The table guests have just heard that the Surinamese Court of Justice sentences Desi Bouterse to twenty years in prison, according to demand, but does not order immediate imprisonment. Burke: “That verdict means nothing to me if he is just chilling in a jacuzzi in his country house.”
Disagree, says Guilly Koster, journalist, activist and regular table guest at the Multicolored Amsterdam Radio and Television, which has been broadcasting from Amsterdam Zuidoost for 38 years. “It is about due process of law. At the time of the December murders, the Constitution in Suriname was suspended. Now we have a well-functioning Constitution, so the judges must adhere to it.”
“If Bouterse can just continue to live his life,” says Burke, “for me it is a hollow verdict.”
Koster: “If you see justice mainly as revenge and satisfaction, this is insufficient. But if you value orderly justice, this is good.”
The conversation at Radio Mart (“a channel of opinions and feelings”, according to Koster) reflects what is also visible elsewhere among Surinamese Dutch: division. Many people are happy and relieved with the verdict and hope that Bouterse will disappear behind bars as soon as possible. But there are also plenty of people in the Surinamese community – approximately 350,000 souls, largely living in the Bijlmer – who think differently.
Bouterse’s opponents in the Netherlands have made their voices heard clearly since the verdict: lawyer Gerard Spong, journalist Noraly Beyer, and above all the relatives of the fifteen victims of the December murders. They believe that justice has prevailed and hope that Bouterse’s political role has now finally been played out.
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One of them is doctor and publicist Henry Does, who fled Suriname after the December murders and wrote books about Bouterse’s regime. The verdict, he says, shows that “the idea of democratic freedom has won over military dictatorship.” For him, the conviction is the final step in Suriname’s transition to a fully-fledged democratic constitutional state. “We have now had eight elections in a row with peaceful changes of power.”
Does does not object to the fact that Bouterse does not have to go to prison immediately. “I think the most important thing is the Court’s motivation. The debunking of all those defamatory things that Bouterse has claimed about the victims, that they wanted to commit a counter-coup or were shot because they wanted to escape.” He calls the verdict “a victory for the truth.” “That is more relevant than whether Bouterse ends up in prison or not. He does not have eternal life, but this sentence stands forever.”
The Bouterse sympathizers in the Netherlands have become less visible since Wednesday’s ruling, but that does not mean that they are not there. Former councilor Hannah Belliot (PvdA) thinks that the pro-Bouterse camp is “coming close to the majority” of Surinamese Dutch. Judging from the sounds among call-ins, Norman van Gom, director and presenter of Radio Mart, estimates the pro-Bouterse camp to be as high as 70 percent. “They go all out on the channel.” This Wednesday there is little to notice: as intense as the table guests discuss, it remains just as quiet when it comes to call-ins.
The division over Bouterse runs mainly along socio-economic lines. The prosperous, well-educated part of the Surinamese Dutch is often strongly opposed to Bouterse; especially the extremely vocal group of relatives of the December murders and others who left the country after 1982. But among “disadvantaged groups”, says Belliot, the former president is still extremely popular. “Many Bouta live in Amsterdam South East-believers. These are people who have lived in poverty for generation after generation. To them he is a kind of pope, almost a martyr. In the senior complex where I occasionally help, nine out of ten people are pro-Bouterse.”
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What is striking: few sympathizers of the former president in the Netherlands say outright that they think his conviction is unjustified. They also believe in the democratic constitutional state. But they do question how fair the process was. They start about the Dutch colonel Hans Valk, who is said to have helped Bouterse during his military coup in 1980. The documents about this have been declared secret by the Dutch government until 2060. “The relatives and the judges did not insist that this file be brought to the table in the legal proceedings,” says artist Roy ‘Kaikusi’ Groenberg, chairman of the Honor and Recovery Foundation. “That leaves a bit of a bitter aftertaste. Perhaps there are things in it that are extra stressful for Bouterse. Or just relieving. That’s what you want to know, right?”
Another strategy: point to Bouterse’s successor as president of Suriname, the very unpopular Chan Santokhi. “Santokhi is the worst president of all time,” says table guest Glenn Codfried in the Radio Mart studio. “For some people, Bouterse is a buffer to prevent the country from further eroding.”
Hannah Belliot, who is “satisfied” that Bouterse has been convicted, is also critical of the judicial process regarding the December murders. She points out that the bloodshed during the Internal War (1986-1992, almost 500 civilian deaths) between the Jungle Commando of Ronnie Brunswijk and the Surinamese army led by Bouterse was never criminally investigated. “The relatives of the December murders come from the elite. They could litigate for twenty years and pay expensive lawyers. The victims of the war came from the interior, how were they supposed to pay for those procedures?” Although she thinks the ruling against Bouterse is “justified”, Belliot “still has the feeling that there are double standards in Suriname.”
Opinions differ as to whether the verdict can lead to reconciliation between both camps. Roy Groenberg is convinced that it is possible. “Despite three hundred years of slavery, Suriname has never reacted falsely to the Netherlands for one day. So why wouldn’t Surinamese people be able to find each other after 41 years of arguing and arguing?”
Hannah Belliot: “Healing doesn’t just fly in like a bird. As long as you don’t bring the perpetrators of the Internal War to justice, I don’t see that happening.”
There is one point on which Bouterse’s opponents and sympathizers find each other without difficulty: a deep aversion to the ex-colonizer Netherlands. Whether it concerns slavery or the messy transfer of sovereignty, the alleged role of Colonel Valk, or the years of reluctance to insist on prosecuting Bouterse for the December murders (“disparagement of what took place”, according to Henry Does), the consensus is that the Netherlands has only played a bad role. “The Netherlands is the founder of all this misery,” says Glenn Codfried on Radio Mart.
Guilly Koster, when the microphone is turned off: “The Netherlands is a co-perpetrator. So it should shut up anyway.”
Mmv Mirjam van Zuidam