Caribbean Corner

As leaders of his National Democratic Party (NDP) had bragged, Desi Delano Bouterse needed no formal send-off from the state as he was cremated on Saturday. Thousands of Surinamese either joined the funeral procession or lined the route from his city home to NDP headquarters, where he was eulogized and remembered as a fierce nationalist who had changed the country's politics, albeit sometimes through extra-parliamentary means. Bouterse, who died hours before Christmas Day at 79, was denied a state funeral by the administration of President Chan Santokhi, as the cabinet had cited his links to two previous military coups and the notorious December 1982 mass murders of 15 government opponents for which he was eventually convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison along with four co-defendants. [caption id="attachment_69584" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Jen-ai Bouterse, Peggy Bouterse and widow Ingrid Bouterse attend a memorial service for ...

Surinamese citizens awoke to the sad news on Christmas Day after authorities confirmed the death of former military strongman and two-time elected president Desi Bouterse, almost a year after he went into hiding to avoid a 20-year jail sentence for mass murder committed 42 years ago. It is unclear as to exactly where and how Bouterse, 79, had died and how his lifeless body ended up in his riverside home, which was being closely watched by authorities for clues to his hiding place. His death sometime on Christmas Eve came just days after police had stepped up raids of possible hiding places of Bouterse, who had disappeared in mid-January, hours before he, trusted bodyguard Iwan Dijksteel, and three others convicted for the December 1982 mass murders of 15 government opponents, were scheduled to surrender to authorities to begin serving sentences. [caption id="attachment_69355" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Relatives of victims of the December mu...