On Tuesday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to an editorial in this newspaper which appeared last Sunday, captioned ‘Fishing licences’. The release provided clarification about the 150 fishing licences to be issued to Guyanese fishermen by Paramaribo from January 2022, which it said pertained to Suriname’s Exclusive Economic Zone, and not the Corentyne River as had been incorrectly stated in the editorial. The issuance of fishing licences was one element in the agreement signed by Presidents Irfaan Ali and Chandrikapersad Santokhi when they met in Georgetown last month.
The Ministry’s statement went on to say: “Having clarified that the premise of the entire editorial is incorrect, and not based on fact, there seems to be no need to correct the other statements and assertions that directly flow from that inaccuracy in the editorial.” While the rectification of the initial error is certainly appreciated, it has to be said that much of what follows in the editorial does not flow from what was erroneously described as the “premise”. Questions were raised that the Ministry’s correction has not addressed.
In fact the gravamen of the leader related to the status of the Corentyne River, and it is still not clear to the public at large let alone, one suspects, the fishermen in particular, precisely what position the Government of Guyana takes in this matter. In the interest of clarity, therefore, we would like to suggest to the Ministry that it would be helpful if there were further explication in this regard.
In last week’s editorial we had referred to a meeting in June between Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha and a number of fishermen who said that they often fished around Orealla and neighbouring areas. They described being harassed by a Suriname patrol, but it was not specified that this happened in Suriname’s EEZ, so the implication was that it occurred at Orealla which is most certainly not in Surinamese coastal waters.
In our original news report in June it had been said that the fishermen requested that the government make efforts to see that they received their own licences to fish in the Corentyne River. Since they obviously could not be talking about our neighbour’s coastal waters here, once again the implication would seem to be that they were referring to areas further upriver, such as Orealla.
We reported them too as telling the Minister that an official from the Ministry of Agriculture had advised them to obtain a Guyana licence, but then others had told them that this could not be used to fish in Suriname waters or the connecting area. Even if this did mean the Suriname EEZ, what exactly is the ‘connecting area’? Is this not potentially Guyanese waters, or at least, waters where sovereignty has not yet been established? In addition, is it the case that different officials here do not have a common understanding of what the situation in the river really is? If so, then that is another reason why it would be useful if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offered clarification about Guyana’s stance where the Corentyne above its mouth is concerned.
President Ali himself did not make the situation any clearer when he made reference in his press conference to two complaints from Indigenous residents, and then went on to say that these problems had been resolved after the Surinamese had been notified. He also said that the two countries were identifying officials who could address matters raised by Indigenous communities.
These residents have a right recognised by both Guyana and Suriname to pursue their traditional lifestyle on the river. But what the complaints do suggest, however, is that their activities were interdicted by a Surinamese patrol, lending credence to the interpretation that it was the actions of such a patrol which was interfering with the activities of Guyana’s other fishermen in the Orealla area, and that these were operating on the assumption they required licences from Paramaribo to fish there.
As was said last week the Suriname public was told following the decision of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the maritime dispute with this country, that the tribunal had awarded the Corentyne River to Suriname. It is not so, although in the introduction which does not form part of the judgement it is said that a 1799 agreement placed the boundary between the two nations on the west bank of the river, effectively granting the whole river to Suriname. However, this account of the agreement is inaccurate.
We had also alluded to a 1930s draft treaty between the Netherlands and the UK which would have granted the whole of the Corentyne River to Suriname, and the whole of the New River Triangle to what was then British Guiana. That treaty was never signed first because the Second World War intervened, and then because after the war Suriname nationalists put pressure on The Hague not to do so. As things stand, therefore, neither side has internationally recognised ownership of the Corentyne River.
That said, Paramaribo has always been aggressive in pursuing its claims along the border it shares with us, and has always operated as if the river was theirs. The situation was not helped following the ITLOS judgement in favour of Guyana where the maritime portion of the frontier was concerned. At the time President Venetiaan’s government misleadingly told the Surinamese public that the tribunal had granted the Corentyne River to their country.
As a consequence, one supposes that this reinforced the habit of the Suriname Coast Guard patrolling the river and demanding licences from Guyanese fishing there. It is a way of securing de facto acquiescence from Guyana that the river is theirs. As was mentioned before too, since 1992 this country no longer asserts rights on that waterway after the PPP/C government terminated the regular military patrols to Orealla that had obtained under the PNC. One suspects, therefore, that it doesn’t matter what area is specified in the Ali-Santokhi agreement in relation to the 150 licences – assuming that one is specified – the Suriname authorities will still demand that Guyanese produce licences for fishing higher up the river as well. It is a sovereignty issue.
Last week we had raised the possibility that the government here had persuaded itself that the river would go to Suriname in any arbitration, so there would be no point in confronting our neighbour on the matter now. One hopes this is not so. What it means is that when it comes to settling the dispute over the New River Triangle that would be negotiated as an issue on its own. It is not that our case where this is concerned is not an excellent one, it is just that there would appear to be some merit from a negotiating standpoint in considering the two boundary elements at the same forum.
As it is the Suriname Starnieuws website reports President Santokhi as saying on his return from this country that talks with Guyana had begun on what was described as the “Upper Corentine border issue” – i.e. the New River Triangle. Foreign Minister Albert Ramdin was quoted as saying, “At the moment there is a mandate to complete the exchange of historical documents. After that, based on the joint reports by the subcommittees, a joint final report with recommendations will be drawn up. This will be presented to the chairmen of the two border commissions. They will then offer it back to the government.”
The Foreign Minister, so it was reported, would not be drawn on whether Suriname was preferring an actual claim to the New River Triangle (that has been the standard posture in the past); a decision would be taken, he said, once the consultation process was completed and meanwhile he did not want to “prejudge the findings”.
If this report is reliable, then it is all very interesting, because neither President Ali nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have had anything to say about it. One can only wonder why the Government of Suri-name can see fit to keep its citizens au courant with what is happening on the boundary front, but for reasons which are obscure, the Government of Guy-ana prefers to keep its citizens in the dark. President Santokhi was quoted as saying, “We need to show leadership and not pass the problem off to the next generation … Let’s not burden the next generation. Take responsibility and talk, find solutions. That is the vision of the two new presidents.” This sounds like a mature approach, so why wouldn’t the Guyana authorities want to relay this to the public here?
But this brings us back to the original question, since according to the Suriname website these talks concern the New River Triangle alone. So what about the river? And this is a matter which needs to be negotiated or arbitrated; it should not be a question of just ceding jurisdiction on the Corentyne by default. Even if there were some kind of formal agreement that Suriname would obtain the whole of the waterway, there would still be an issue of user rights to settle. Then again, should she have the whole river, or should there be a median line or a thalweg boundary?
In a reproving tone the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Stabroek News it hoped it would “find it appropriate to acknowledge the efforts of the leaders of Guyana and Suriname to meet common ground on issues of day-to-day interest to their peoples …” We do acknowledge these efforts, but it would be helpful to know, if only in a general sense, what these comprise. Are the border commissions and sub-committees on both sides beginning work on the New River Triangle dispute, for example? And how did the River Corentyne figure in the discussions between Presidents Ali and Santokhi?
And if it didn’t, just what is the position of the Guyana Government in relation to this river?
