The week before last an agreement with our neighbour to the east was announced whereby licences would be issued by Paramaribo to this country’s fishermen to operate in the Corentyne beginning in January 2022. This accord emerged from discussions between the Agriculture Ministers of Guyana and Suriname during the official visit here of President Chandrikapersad Santokhi.
Guyanese fishermen have been complaining for years about harassment by Surinamese patrols on the Corentyne River, even when they have obtained licences from Suriname to fish there. Two months ago a number of fishermen had met with Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha to complain about the harassment, and had named a member of the Surinamese patrol who demanded money in order to allow them to fish. He was not concerned whether the licences they had in their possession had expired or not, said the local fishers; permission came through payment to him. They told Mr Mustapha of a case which had occurred in May, when two boats were seized by the patrol and one of the owners was forced to pay US$7,500 in order to have his vessel returned.
There are two issues: one is the matter of extortion on the part of some Surinamese Coast Guard officers, and the other is the question of Paramaribo issuing licences to Guyanese to fish in Corentyne waters. Where the first of these is concerned President Irfaan Ali said at the joint press conference with his Surinamese counterpart, “There were some allegations and we asked the fishermen to give us the info in relation to the licensing, so we had a back and forward with that that impeded the finalization of this issue, but we have come to a solution.” It is difficult to imagine the Suriname authorities conceding publicly that some of their officials were corrupt, although at a private level they may be prepared to follow this up.
The matter of our fishermen having to apply to Paramaribo for licences to fish in the Corentyne River in the first place is altogether more problematic. In addition, they will have to operate within the limits of a quota set by the neighbouring country. While it is true the authorities have to be sensitive to the dangers of over-fishing in the Corentyne, really speaking quotas granted with this in mind beyond the mouth of the river should be something agreed between the two sides. Guyana, however, has ceded this responsibility to Paramaribo.
In a meeting with US Ambassador Sarah-Ann Lynch in April this year one fisherman told her that they were paying US$3,000 for a licence. He also told her he was aware Minister Mustapha had been working with the Suriname authorities to see that approximately 150 Guyanese could receive licences. Interestingly, it also emerged that an official from the Agriculture Ministry here had suggested the fishermen acquire a Guyana licence, but after they did so they were then advised by others that this could not be used to fish in Suriname waters or connected areas.
So where exactly are Suriname waters, more especially as these pertain to the Corentyne?
From the second half of the last century the Surinamese have adopted an aggressive posture in relation to the whole length of their border with Guyana. A draft treaty between the Netherlands and the UK in the 1930s would have given the whole of the Corentyne to Suriname and the New River Triangle to what was then British Guiana. The maritime boundary was to take as its starting point a marker which was laid down at No. 61 Village and which was then to follow a 10o line for three nautical miles across the territorial sea. The problem is the treaty was never signed owing to the intervention of war in 1939, and after that Suriname nationalists put pressure on the authorities in The Hague not to sign it.
In 2000 Surinamese gunboats evicted a CGX rig from waters which were later determined to belong to Guyana. The aim was to use this act of force − presumably with the implied threat of further force if necessary − as a lever to extract concessions along the length of the border. After a series of fruitless boundary negotiations, Guyana took the maritime dispute to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg, which found in this country’s favour.
The Suriname public was shocked, because it had been informed by more than one government it was certain to win. In order to sweeten the pill somewhat, then President Venetiaan told his compatriots that the tribunal had granted the Corentyne River to Suriname. It was not so. The decision did not deal with the status of the river at all, although in the introductory section which includes the historical background to the dispute it is stated that in a 1799 agreement between the Suriname and Berbice governors the border was to run along the west bank of the Corentyne. Not only as already mentioned did this not form part of the judgement, it was also inaccurate, the eminence of the justices notwithstanding. That agreement did not give Suriname ownership of the river.
Suriname had been behaving as if the Corentyne came within its jurisdiction long before the ITLOS judgement of 2007; even the implementation of the ferry across the Corentyne River was delayed for years, in large part because Paramaribo was manoeuvring to secure some border advantage out of it. After the maritime settlement, however, the authorities to our east, as mentioned above, have asserted they had been granted the whole river. Where they will indeed have jurisdiction is at the river mouth from 61 Village north following a 10o line for three nautical miles until it meets the line which connects it with the line of equidistance dividing the two territories across the continental shelf. But to reiterate, in the river proper to the south of that, the matter of sovereignty has never been settled, certainly not at Orealla and neighbouring areas, where some of the fishermen told Minister Mustapha they would often fish.
The PPP/C government, which has always harboured a very indulgent view of Suriname’s intentions does not appear to have asked any questions about their insistence on our fishermen buying licences when they are operating outside Suriname waters even as far upriver as Orealla. The only objections which have been raised, it seems, relate to the activities of Indigenous people from that village and other settlements along the Corentyne. President Ali told the press conference that there had been two complaints by Indigenous residents, and that the problems had been resolved after the Surinamese had been notified. He went on to say that both countries were in the process of identifying officials who could tackle issues raised by Indigenous communities.
Both Suriname and Guyana unofficially recognise that Indigenous people have the right to pursue their traditional lifestyle in the river without interference from officialdom. They are, however, a special case. It is not as if the government appears to have protested about other fishermen having to apply for licences to Paramaribo to fish there. As a consequence it becomes a tacit form of acquiescence in terms of Suriname’s sovereignty claims to the Corentyne. The administration has let this ride for so long, it will undoubtedly not be prepared to pursue an avenue of confrontation now, not to mention that it would be disinclined to put the livelihoods of some of the local fishermen in jeopardy. The government does not even seem prepared to register a formal objection. It may be of course that they have persuaded themselves that the river in any case would be awarded to Suriname were it to go to arbitration, so there is no point in recording their reservations now.
If so, what this would mean is that when it came to settling the dispute over the New River Triangle, that would stand as an issue on its own. This is not to say that Guyana’s case in relation to the Triangle is not an excellent one; quite the contrary in fact. However, from a negotiating point of view there would seem to be some merit in this country maintaining its claim on the Corentyne River – and recent events notwithstanding this is not an indefensible claim – so the two segments of the boundary would be considered at the same forum. It might be noted, for example, that when the PNC was in office prior to 1992, there used to be regular GDF river patrols to Orealla, just to make the point to the government to the east about the status of the Corentyne. These were stopped by the PPP/C.
That aside, in any case this country needs some clarity on the status of the river: does the whole of the waterway belong to Suriname, for example, or should there be a thalweg boundary or one which follows a median line? Furthermore, there are also issues pertaining to user rights which need to be defined. President Ali, perhaps, should have been having a different kind of conversation with President Santokhi.