Suriname's Sergeants' Coup
Sixteen sergeants took over Suriname on 25 February 1980, five years after independence from the Netherlands. The country was small — around 400,000 people of Indian, Javanese, African, Chinese, indigenous and Dutch descent — and about a third of its population had already left for the Netherlands before and after independence, taking much of the professional class with them. The coup's stated grievance was trade union rights in the army and a court case against soldiers organising one. Its leader was Sergeant Major Dési Bouterse, who was twenty-four and had trained in the Netherlands. He governed for the following decade through a succession of civilian figureheads. On the night of 8 December 1982, fifteen prominent critics — lawyers, journalists, academics, trade unionists, an army commander — were taken from their homes to Fort Zeelandia and shot. The government said they had been killed while trying to escape. The Netherlands and the United States cut aid, which removed most of the budget. A guerrilla war in the interior from 1986, fought by the Maroon communities descended from people who had escaped the plantations, killed several hundred and displaced tens of thousands. Bouterse handed over to elected government in 1987 and staged another coup in 1990. He was convicted in the Netherlands in absentia of cocaine trafficking in 1999. He was then elected president in 2010 and served two terms. He was convicted of the December murders in 2019 and again on appeal in 2023, and went into hiding. He surrendered in January 2024 and died in exile the following December, having never served the sentence.
- Year: 1980 CE
- Category: Political
