A long procession of people yearning for justice. Surinamese who, forty years after the largest mass murder in the history of the country that has been independent since 1975, finally want to see the perpetrators punished. That is the image in no less than two documentaries that can be seen on Dutch television in a week, forty years after the December murders in Suriname.
In the movie It’s Not a Past – 08 12 1982 (Human) journalist Noraly Beyer (1946) and documentary maker Ida Does (1955) poignantly record the Surinamese trauma. Beyer was a newsreader for the Surinamese state channel STVS when the murder took place. On the day of the December murders, she says she lost her innocence. She immediately left for the Netherlands.
In the night of December 7 to 8, 1982, fifteen opponents of the military regime of Suriname led by Desi Bouterse were killed. The critics – including lawyers, journalists, soldiers and entrepreneurs – were shot dead in Fort Zeelandia, the army headquarters in Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname.
Three years ago, after a long-drawn-out process, Bouterse – who came to power in 1980 after a violent coup d’état – was sentenced to twenty years in prison as the main suspect by the Court Martial, for complicity in ‘eliminating’ opponents. The army chief, who had previously been sentenced to an irrevocable prison sentence of eleven years in the Netherlands for cocaine trafficking, had “invented” that the fifteen murdered men were planning a takeover of power, according to the court.
‘Never forget’
Beyer and Does reconstruct the events and the aftermath. Beyer guides the viewer through the former Dutch colony. She shows old news footage and speaks with relatives, witnesses, young people and legal experts. Hospital staff detail the torture-inflicted injuries they saw on the remains. “This is the worst thing I have experienced in my almost ninety years of life,” says Rita Small, then nursing director of the academic hospital in Paramaribo. “But I never want to forget it and I will never forget it.”
In Paramaribo, artists tell how they are still struggling with the murder of fifteen prominent compatriots. They exhibit works about the atrocities in Ready Tex Art Gallery in Paramaribo. John Lie A Fo, four months younger than Bouterse, shows paintings he made at the time. He’s still shocked. How could these atrocities happen in the sweetest country in South America? “We are one big family in Suriname,” says Lie A Fo. In December 1982, a huge gust of wind rocked the whole country. “Justice no longer exists”.
Beyer ends her tour at the cemetery in Paramaribo where her murdered colleagues rest under weathered gravestones. She tells a young colleague about the victims. Here lies Lesley Rahman (28), editor of The True Time. “A versatile boy with a good pen.” And there is the grave of journalist Bram Behr (31). “He still had a lot to say,” says Beyer, stroking the marble. “Yes, Bramtje”.
In Dear Mr Bouterse, 32-year-old journalist Ananta Khemradj mainly looks ahead. Can Suriname still be healed? And how on earth? She tries to seduce Surinamese into a therapeutic group discussion about ‘this thing’, the shadows from the past. It only works moderately. Ricardo Panka, former spokesperson for Bouterse, raises the question of what will happen if Bouterse disappears behind bars after all. “Then have the relatives closure found it?” An answer is not forthcoming. Director Pim de la Parra predicts that it will take another 2,300 years before Surinamese can really go through one door again.
The documentaries do not yet contain the very latest news. The appeal trial of the suspects in this case is in its final phase. The main villain himself is still at large forty years after the atrocities. Last month he showed himself in public when he was surrounded by security guards at Fort Zeelandia. There, under the leadership of the judges of the Court of Justice and in the presence of suspects and witnesses, an inspection took place, the crime scene was examined again.
Bouterse made a stoic impression. The dictator of yesteryear has become a sluggishly walking and talking 77-year-old man with a purple cap. “It took some getting used to,” he told the press afterwards. The Fort had changed in forty years, the former army chief had noticed. But he said he was not emotional.
The court will hear the last witnesses next week. The closing hearing and pleadings are scheduled for January. The verdict is expected in February 2023. Should Bouterse be convicted again in February, he can at least temporarily prevent execution of the sentence by requesting pardon from the President of Suriname within eight days of the verdict. Such a request has, says lawyer Gerard Spong when asked, suspensory effect. The justice that Suriname so longs for will therefore be a long time coming.