Independence
See also: SurinameIn 1973 the Dutch government started negotiations with the local government, led by the NPK (a largely Creole party) about independence, which was granted on November 25, 1975. The Dutch instituted an aid programme worth US$1.5 billion to last till 1985. The first President of the country was Johan Ferrier, with Henck Arron (leader of the Surinam National Party) as Prime Minister. Roughly a third of the population emigrated to the Netherlands, fearing that the new country would not be able to survive.
In 1980, the government of Henck Arron was overthrown in a military coup led by Sergeant-Major Desi Bouterse. President Ferrier refused to recognise the new government, appointing Henk Chin A Sen (of the Nationalist Republican Party). Another coup followed five months later, with the army replacing Ferrier with Chin A Sen. These developments were largely welcomed by a population that expected the new army-installed government to put an end to corruption and improve the standard of living. This was despite the fact that the new regime banned opposition parties and became increasingly dictatorial. The Dutch initially accepted the new government, however, relations between Suriname and the Netherlands collapsed when 15 members of the political opposition were killed by the army on December 8, 1982, in Fort Zeelandia. This event is also known as the December killings (Decembermoorden in Dutch). The Dutch and Americans cut off their aid in protest at the move.
In 1985, the ban on opposition parties was lifted, and work began on devising a new constitution. The following year saw the start of an anti-government rebellion of the Maroons in the interior, calling themselves the Jungle Commando and led by Ronnie Brunswijk. The Bouterse government violently tried to suppress the insurgency by burning villages and other similar means. Many Maroons fled to French Guiana.Then to New Amsterdam
Read more about this topic: History Of Suriname
Famous quotes containing the word independence:
“In England the judges should have independence to protect the people against the crown. Here the judges should not be independent of the people, but be appointed for not more than seven years. The people would always re-elect the good judges.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Traditionally in American society, men have been trained for both competition and teamwork through sports, while women have been reared to merge their welfare with that of the family, with fewer opportunities for either independence or other team identifications, and fewer challenges to direct competition. In effect, women have been circumscribed within that unit where the benefit of one is most easily believed to be the benefit of all.”
—Mary Catherine Bateson (b. 1939)