DRUGS TO THE WEST, ROBBERY TO THE EAST: TAXI

UNCLAS PARAMARIBO 000282 SIPDIS SIPDIS SENSITIVE WHA/CAR FOR LLUFTIG, INR FOR BOB CARHART, INL FOR KEVIN BROWN, DEA HQ OEL/SC FOR HILL, TOTH, AND DESANTIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ASEC SNAR PGOV NS SUBJECT: DRUGS TO THE WEST, ROBBERY TO THE EAST: TAXI DRIVING RISKY IN SURINAME REF: PARAMARIBO 266 ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Over the last two years, there have been 48 instances of Surinamese taxi drivers who have been victims of reported crimes up to and including murder. On the lone road west from Paramaribo to Guyana, the most common incidence is involvement in drug transportation. Taxi drivers have threatened to barricade the lone road east from Paramaribo to French Guiana to protest conditions which easily lead to robbery. The east is increasingly lawless, and the influence of local leader Ronny Brunswijk unwholesome. END SUMMARY -------------- West: Drugs -------------- ¶2. (U) A lightly-used road runs along the coast west from Paramaribo to the border ferries to Guyana. Despite frequent police checkpoint efforts, Nieuw Nickerie Chief of Police Kenneth Bruining acknowledges the route is increasingly used by individuals trafficking drugs into Suriname from Guyana. (Nieuw Nickerie is Suriname,s westernmost city, situated on the Corantijn River, which separates Suriname from Guyana) Police usually release taxi drivers initially held in arrests, but say "there are drivers who know very well what they are transporting;" most of the driver who are involved or are victimized in these crimes are unlicensed "street taxis." One taxi driver said: "it has happened to me three times. All three times it was Guyanese whom I had picked up from the (illegal but tolerated) back-track, route. It was very difficult to prove to the police that the drugs weren,t mine." When asked why he continues to drive the route? "Because it pays." -------------- East: Robbery -------------- ¶3. (U) Another desolate road runs along the coast east from Paramaribo to the Marowijne River border with French Guiana. The road was heavily damaged during Suriname,s interior war in the 1980s and 1990s, and further potholed by heavy rains in 2007. Drivers on the many isolated stretches are easy targets. In the words of one: "they wait in ambush to rob cars that come from French Guiana or from the gold fields (to the south) and are assumed to be carrying a lot of money." The driver also detailed an incident in which four masked men opened fire on a taxi carrying three Brazilians--much of the illegal gold mining in Suriname,s interior is carried out by Brazilians. On May 30th, a local newspaper reported that Charles Fania, a representative of drivers on the route, threatened to barricade the road the week of June 4th to protest conditions. Fania said frequent complaints to the Ministry of Public Works have come to nothing (ref),and that no upkeep has occurred in the seventeen years he has driven the route. ¶4. (SBU) COMMENT: Taxi drivers, woes are not an isolated societal problem. Rather, they point to the difficulties in maintaining law and order in the largely ungoverned areas outside of Suriname,s capital. While drug seizures along the roads in the west have become commonplace, lawlessness in the east is even more troubling, and points to systemic problems. The eastern Marowijne area,s most prominent and popular politician is Ronny Brunswijk, who led the rebel Jungle Commando during the interior war, and has been convicted of drug trafficking in absentia by a French court. Brunswijk now sits in parliament as a loose-cannon member of the governing coalition. It is rumored that Brunswijk does not welcome the influence of the Ministry of Justice and Police in Marowijne; a Dutch diplomat confided to Post that he thinks Brunswijk is trying to set up a "Marowijne Free State" in the area. Although Suriname is tiny (roughly the size of the state of Georgia),effective control of the nation outside the capital remains yet another governance issue for President Venetiaan,s ruling coalition. END COMMENT SCHREIBER HUGHES