Surinamese mining companies and once-displaced villagers vie for land rights
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
August 28, 2001
By Ian James, Associated Press
NIEUW KOFFIEKAMP, Suriname — Young men splattered with mud aim high-pressure hoses at embankments of earth, washing away soil in search of gold.To Suriname's government and mining companies with exploration rights, they are illegal miners. But to the men in the pits, the land belongs to them.
After all, it was the government that forced their families to leave their old village at Koffiekamp in 1963 to make way for a hydroelectric dam. The villagers, descendants of escaped slaves known as Maroons, resettled on land where flecks of gold shimmered on the ground, calling the place Nieuw Koffiekamp.
Officials in the South American country won't rule out the possibility of relocating the village again to make way for mining, leaving villagers anxious that the government may try to evict them one day.
"We want land rights," a villager, Dennie Pryor, said over the roar of diesel-powered water pumps at the edge of a mining pit. "It's the community's land."
The dispute reflects a struggle being waged over land by the Maroons of Suriname and indigenous people throughout the Americas.
Because the government of the former Dutch colony claims all mining rights, the villagers have little control over how the land is used. Victor Albitrouw, 79, compared the village's dilemma to that of a trapped insect. "A cockroach doesn't have any rights in the beak of a chicken," he said, reciting an old Surinamese saying.
In the early 1990s, Suriname granted two mining companies the right to explore for gold on 42,000 acres that include Nieuw Koffiekamp. The companies, Golden Star Resources Ltd. of Denver and Cambior Inc. of Montreal, have tolerated the villagers' mining but say it must stop. "The more it goes on, the more the youth feel they own the reserves," said Peter Donald, Golden Star's general manager in Suriname.
The area 60 miles south of Paramaribo, the capital, was the site of gold mining long before the Maroons were moved here, and officials say many local miners have no ties to Nieuw Koffiekamp.
Some miners have bought cellular phones and other items with the gold they've found, but the village remains poor. Many villagers have gone to the city in search of work, and most of the roughly 400 who remain live in shacks built decades ago by the government.
Their demand for better economic conditions has coincided with the fading traditions of Maroons, whose ancestors escaped from sugar plantations and formed African-centered societies deep in the forests. For centuries, they carved canoe paddles, decorated calabash bowls and left offerings at towering kankan trees, which they believed embodied the spirits of the dead. Now the Maroon arts are fading, and many villagers have abandoned the kankan trees for churches.
Despite a bush war from 1986 to 1992 in which rebels demanded greater land rights for Maroons, the government has not set aside any lands for Maroons or the country's indigenous peoples, who together number about 60,000. It has allocated vast areas for logging and nature areas, however, creating friction with those who hold no land titles.
The debate is common throughout the region. But Suriname is the only country in the Americas with Maroon or indigenous peoples that doesn't legally recognize their land rights, said Fergus MacKay, a human rights lawyer with the British-based Forest Peoples Program.
Surinamese officials say they try to be sensitive to the Maroons' needs. But Deputy Mining Director Glenn Gemerts added, "What is in the ground belongs to the country itself." He said it's not yet clear whether the villagers of Nieuw Koffiekamp will have to move.
Cambior's president, Louis Gignac, said he would like to train and involve villagers in the operation once mining begins. "We're well aware of Koffiekamp and its inhabitants," he said.
Villagers say they want to coexist with the companies, which could bring new jobs as they have in neighboring Guyana at the Omai gold mine. But that mine also brought disaster in 1995, when a waste reservoir collapsed and poured millions of gallons of cyanide-tainted water into rivers. Large numbers of fish died and drinking water had to be trucked in for hundreds of towns. Golden Star's Donald said cyanide also would be used in Suriname to extract gold from ore, but he insisted the process is safe.
He also accused local miners of poisoning the water supply by using mercury to separate gold from ore. The miners deny this, saying they only use pumps to suck up the muddy water and run it through sluices that help extract gold.
Under current mining plans, the village would not have to be moved, Donald said. But if the demand for gold rises and operations should expand, he said blasting and heavy machinery might require the village to relocate.
Villagers said the government suggested several years ago that they move elsewhere, but they refused.
Pryor's 83-year-old uncle, village leader Mesag Pryor, said the experience of leaving the old village was too traumatic. "We had a burial place there. It's now underwater," he said. "Now we have to leave this again and make another burial ground? Never!"