Suriname 2014
Yearbook 2014
Suriname.Suriname population in 2020 is estimated at 586,643. Dino Bouterse, President Desi Bouterses’s son, pleaded guilty to drug smuggling, illegal weapons possession and international terrorism at a New York court hearing in late August. The latter charge, which was about procuring fake Surinamese identity documents to Lebanese Hezbollah agents, was particularly troublesome, not least for President Desi Bouterse, who in 2010 appointed his son as head of Suriname’s counter-terrorism unit. The prosecutor applied for 15 years in prison for all three charges. President Bouterse himself was convicted in 1999 in his absence at a Dutch drug trafficking court.
Despite the chilly relations with the former colonial power of the Netherlands, which, in addition to the Bouterse case, was also based on allegations of human rights violations during the 1980–87 dictatorship, the foreign ministers of both countries Winston Lackin and Frans Timmermans declared at the end of September that diplomatic relations would be restored. Timmermans explained the complete reversal of the importance of safeguarding the historical cultural ties between the two countries rather than getting caught up in political disagreements.
According to topb2bwebsites, with neighboring Guyana, however, relations continued to be strained during the year, mainly due to a multi-decade long border dispute over the Tigrio area (in Guyana called the New River Triangle). The area in southeastern Guyana is controlled by Guyana, and Suriname’s claims are expressed in maps that represent it as Surinamese territory. For that reason, Guyana boycotted an international mining and energy conference in Suriname’s capital Paramaribo in June. Foreign Minister Lackin commented that Suriname could very well go to war documents on the basis of their claims, if it were not for “war is expensive and money is best used for health care and education”.
SURINAME. – Official name of Guiana formerly a Dutch colony, autonomous member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1954 to 1975, independent state from 25 November 1975.
The area of 163,265 km 2, according to the latest measurements, it is divided into 9 districts, with a population of 448,000 residents in 1977 (average annual increase of 2.7% in the period 1970-77). The capital, Paramaribo, has over 150,000 residents. The main economic resources are wood, extracted from the extensive forests that cover about 90% of the territory (294,000 cubic meters of wood in 1977), and bauxite (4,587,000 t in 1976), which feed the only industrial activities and constitute the main items of export. Agriculture is still limited to the coastal strip, with sugar cane plantations (90,000 q of sugar produced in 1977 by the Mariënburg refinery), which is also widely used for the production of rum, coffee and rice plantations. The cultivation of citrus fruits (oranges,
The current government is made up of a coalition representing various ethnic groups (Creoles, Africans, Indonesians, Chinese) whose coexistence is a source of serious problems, aggravated by social differences. After independence a large number of Dutch natives left the Suriname to return to the Netherlands. Prime Minister is the head of the Suriname National Party, Henck A. Arron. The main opposition group is the Progressive Reform Party, which controls half of the seats in Parliament. The Dutch government has allocated three and a half billion florins to help the Suriname as an independent country.
