Surinamese ex- president Bouterse's murder sentence upheld (Sept. 2, 2021)

A Suriname court confirmed former President Desi Bouterse's 20-year jail sentence for the murder of 15 people in 1982, while he governed as military dictator. Bouterse, 75, was not present at the verdict due to an illness.

The judges upheld the prison sentence that Bouterse was given in 2019 for the murders of 15 opponents to his military regime. Because Bouterse was never present during that trial, he was sentenced in absentia. He then filed an objection, forcing the court-martial to reconsider his case.

Bouterse was on trial for murder and co-perpetration of  the murder of 15 critics of his then-regime on 8 December 1982, known as the "December Murders." At his command, sixteen men had been arrested on the night of 7 to 8 December that year and transferred to Fort Zeelandia, then the headquarters of the Surinamese National Army. Fifteen of those men had been tortured that night and summarily executed.

Bouterse became a democratic president in 2010 after his National Democratic Party won the elections. He remained in power until last year when his party suffered an election defeat, and his rival Chan Santokhi became the new president.

(NL Times, Demerara Waves, New York Times)

Human Rights

• An estimated 30 percent of 48 children’s homes in the south of Haiti that care for about 1,700 children were damaged by the Aug. 14 earthquake. Save the Children, an organization of civil society, has warned that children who lost caregivers in the quake are at risk of neglect, different forms of abuse or even trafficking. (St. Kitts Nevis Observer)
  

Climate Justice and Energy

• The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says events like floods, droughts, and heatwaves account for over 90 percent of all disasters in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 20 years. It warns that climate change impacts are likely to become more intense for the region, reports IPS.

• Climate change is affecting the Atlantic storm season in a variety of ways; warmer oceans mean hurricanes have stronger winds, more rain, slower movement, wider-ranges, and volatility. (New York Times)

• Indicators of the impact of climate change on health and of health-related adaptation and mitigation measures can enable evidence-based policy and initiatives. This presentation, to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) Online Scientific Conference 2021, presents research with stakeholders in Caribbean and Pacific Small Island Developing States to identify priority areas for research and action in these highly vulnerable regions.

• Central and South America and Small Islands generally report greater constraints and both hard and soft limits to adaptation to climate change. (Regional Environmental Change)

• Grand Cayman currently lacks sufficient hurricane shelter capacity to cope with expected demand in the event of a major storm. There are 15 shelters across the island with space for 5,120 people – just 8% of the population. (Cayman Compass)

• ExxonMobil plans to use Corexit 9500, a highly toxic chemical dispersant in the event of an oil spill in any of its projects off of Guyana's coast. Corexit was banned in the UK and faulted for severe human and environmental harms when used in previous oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Macondo oil spill, reports Kaieteur News.

Indigenous rights

• Guyana President Irfaan Ali promised that an updated Amerindian Act will become the principal legal means of protecting the rights of indigenous people including as it relates to their entitlement to lands and rights over those lands. Amerindian leaders for years have been calling for a revamping of the Act and for the full recognition of their rights to ancestral lands, reports Stabroek News.

• Guyana has provided the world with a model for the reconciliation of indigenous titled lands and national protected areas, argues Jessica George-Joseph, in a piece that points to the promulgation of the Amerindian Act in 2006 by Guyana’s parliament, afterwhich the government declared and demarcated several indigenous territories. (ICUN World Conservation Congress)
  

Gender and LGBTQ+

• Trinidad and Tobago's government has preserved a historic gender binary perspective that marginalizes queer identities, its failure to establish gender as an integral component of identity along with its continued use of binary gender language in official documents like cultural policy, argues Shari Bissoondatt at Feminitt Caribbean Blog.

Human Rights

• At Puerto Rico’s two juvenile lockups, isolation among detained youths — and temporary shortages among the staff trained to deal with it — have led to a worrisome spike in the number of youths contemplating or attempting to injure themselves, reports the Miami Herald.
  

Debt, Finance and Economics

• What can debt reveal to us about coloniality and its undoing? In Colonial Debts: The Case of Puerto Rico, Rocío Zambrana theorizes the way debt has been used as a technique of neoliberal coloniality in Puerto Rico, producing profit from death on the island -- New Books in Caribbean Studies

• St. Lucia's new Labour government plans to immediately undertake a process of debt restructuring, in keeping with its campaign platform promise to renegotiate and consolidate existing loans to ease the burden of repayments. (St. Lucia News Online)

Labor

• An International Organization for Migration report provides an overview of the mechanisms that facilitate regular labour migration in the Caribbean, as these mechanisms constitute important elements in regional and national migration governance structures.
  

Regional Relations

• Haitian women who had children with U.N. peacekeepers face intricate legal battles to obtain child support -- the vast majority of cases have stalled in Haiti’s courts and lawyers say judges are reluctant to rule against international institutions or countries providing Haiti with vital aid. In the wake of a presidential assassination in July, and a major earthquake in August, calls for the U.N. to dispatch new peacekeepers triggered resentment among the women left to raise children alone, reports Buzzfeed.
• A broad coalition of 344 organizations called on the U.S. Biden administration to expand relief for Haitian migrants, including halting all deportations to the country, reports The Hill. At least 130 people deported from the U.S. to Haiti since President Jovenel Moïse's assassination in July.
• The United States announced, last week, that it’s providing an additional $32 million in humanitarian assistance to Haiti, part of a broader response to the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that devastated the country's south earlier this month. (Miami Herald) 

• The first ever Caribbean Community (CARICOM)-African Summit will take place virtually on September 7 -- Nation News

• The Cuba Study Group explains U.S. policies on remittances to Cuba.

Covid-19

• Returning to 2019 annual levels of tourism arrivals and expenditures will be gradual, warns the IDB's Caribbean Quarterly Bulletin 

• Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said her government will not implement mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policies. (Barbados Today)

• The Guyana Teachers’ Union, Guyana Public Service Union and their umbrella Guyana Trades Union Congress asked the High Court to quash the government’s vaccination policy which they say amounts to coercion to take the jab -- Demerara Waves
  

Health

• On several Caribbean islands, sea moss has been used medicinally for centuries, but it has recently become increasingly popular around the world as a so-called ‘superfood’ because of its various health benefits -- Caribbean Export Development Agency

Culture

• Afro-Barbadian American writer Rachelle J. Gray’s novel “Kingstown Burning” is a literary social commentary told through the lens of a contemporary cast of Caribbean characters of Rastafari faith, who brave the choppy realities that a new economic order brings into their world -- Repeating Islands
  

Upcoming

• Making Up Your Mind About Natural Resources & The Extractive Sector -- Policy Forum Guyana (PFG) Sept. 1-3

• The second Global Extraction Film Festival, founded by Jamaican film-maker Esther Figueroa, will take place from 9-12 September with over 150 documentaries and shorts from over 40 countries, including a special Focus on the Americas that includes the Caribbean.

• Cuba: An American History: Ada Ferrer with Ben Rhodes -- Sept. 9, New York Public Library

• The Latin American and Caribbean Research Network calls for proposals for the project “LGBTQ+ Persons in Latin America and the Caribbean: Measuring Population Sizes and Obstacles to Economic and Social Inclusion.”
  

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