WHO STILL don’t know, it might not come up. But Suriname has gone through a violent guerrilla war. In June 1986, the ‘Liberation Army’, which would later become known as the Jungle Commando, attacked the military post at Stolkertsijver and took several soldiers hostage. That immediately marked the beginning of what is called the ‘Internal War’ in Suriname. It effectively lasted until 1992. It lasted almost as long as the military dictatorship, caused enormous damage in the hinterland and claimed many lives.
Many of the massacres during this period are labeled as war crimes. These crimes can also be prosecuted beyond the borders of where the offenses were committed. This appears to be the case with former soldier Abdul L. After the Internal War, he left for the Netherlands where he received Dutch nationality. Some time ago it became known that he had narrated his own role in several murders during the Internal War. The Dutch Public Prosecution Service decided to investigate this case and prosecute it ex officio.
The contrast with Suriname could not be greater. In Suriname, virtually no murder case that took place in the context of the Internal War is under investigation. An exception concerns the Moiwana murders, for which it has become known that the Surinamese Public Prosecution Service has reopened the case. However, that is one of the demands of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, where the victims of Moiwana sought justice because Suriname did not respond to their calls for justice.
The Aloeboetoe case was also won at the same court in Costa Rica. The relatives of this group – the Aloeboetoe family was massacred in 1987 – were denied legal access in Suriname. Because while it can be said that prosecuting war criminals is a problem worldwide, the question is whether Suriname is an exception precisely because the vanguard players in the Internal War both legitimately took a seat in the government after their controversial roles.
Yet the Netherlands is not completely free. According to recent research by historian Agir Axwijk, it appears that money from the Netherlands ended up with the Dutch Colonel Bas van Tussenbroek in French Guiana via the Zeister Foundation. He was an advisor to Brunswijk and may have helped finance that war. That could explain the Netherlands’ attitude towards Brunswijk. The Jungle Commando leader is never mentioned in the same breath as Desi Bouterse, even though both men directed the war in their own interests.
In fact, the Dutch Public Prosecution Service and the Central Judicial Collection Agency (CJIB) have confirmed that Brunswijk’s alert to Interpol was officially terminated on July 14, 2020 at the request of the Netherlands itself. The above entails the need for not only ‘criminal prosecution’ of war crimes to take place in the Netherlands during the Internal War, but also for the role of the Netherlands between 1986 and 1992 to be examined. That could possibly bring a lot of clarity to a period where very little research has been done.
