Guyana insisting on rights to Corentyne River

The captain of the MV Chandra 1, seized on Tuesday by the Suriname navy on the Corentyne River, was released from jail yesterday and the seven- member crew and the vessel are due to leave Nickerie to return to Guyana this morning.

Meanwhile, President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday emphasised that the government has made it clear to Suriname that it is prepared to take all necessary steps to protest its interests. Apart from exploring and exhausting diplomatic steps in the first instance to resolve the incident, he said, “Guyana is not taking anything off the table.”

The owner of the vessel, Kampta Persaud, told the Stabroek News last evening that all arrangements were in place for the vessel to leave Nickerie at 7 am to return to the sugar terminal at Skeldon to collect its cargo of sugar for export.

Persaud told Stabroek News he has to pay a fine of US$400 for trespassing into Surinamese territory; an additional sum for customs and wharfage and pilotage of the vessel out of Suriname to the Surinamese authorities; and legal fees for the agent he had to contract to act on his behalf.

According to Persaud, while the Captain, Arnold Garraway, was placed in the lockups, the other six members of the crew were left on board the vessel. He said the 560-tonne boat, which left Demerara on Tuesday to collect its cargo of sugar for export, was seized by the Surinamese military on entering the Corentyne River on its way to the Skeldon wharf to collect its load. He said that he has been contracted by the Guyana Sugar Corporation since 1982 to transport sugar for export from Berbice to the Demerara terminal and this is the first time that his vessel was seized.  Prior to 1982, he worked on the tugs and barges for the Wales and Uitvlugt sugar estates.

Persaud, who was in touch with the crew by phone regularly, said he had to secure an agent in Nickerie to act on his behalf in freeing his crew and vessel. He was not satisfied that the Guyanese authorities acted fast enough to try to secure the release of his men and the vessel.

Thalweg
Meanwhile, at a press briefing at State House yesterday, the President said that Guyana has made it clear that a border river has certain characteristics and the sovereignty of the river is shared based on the median line or the thalweg with countries that are contiguous.

Countries with a border river between them, he said, should share full user rights on the river and he accused Suriname of trying to impose sovereignty unilaterally over the river even though Guyana has indicated a willingness to discuss the issue.

Stating that Guyana was not an aggressive country and relies heavily on diplomacy, he said that when Suriname used force to evict the CGX rig from Guyana’s territorial waters in June 2000, Guyana did not respond with force but sought the route of international law and was vindicated. “That, however, does not say that our response will be the same all the time,” he said.

Responding to a comment that Suriname wants every Guyanese ship using the Corentyne River to have a Surinamese pilot on board, Jagdeo said Guyana does not recognize Suriname’s desire in that regard. On the issue that Suriname deemed the crew illegal immigrants, he said that he does not see how they were illegal immigrants when the Surinamese military took them off their ship and escorted them into their territory.

The fact that they must pay a fine to be released, he said was “not good enough for my government” because the river has the characteristics of a border river and leaving sovereignty aside and which has not been settled, both countries should have full user access.             

He has also briefed PNCR Leader Robert Corbin and AFC Leader Raphael Trotman on the issue.

Meanwhile, PNCR MP Aubrey Norton at a party press briefing described Suriname’s use of force as unacceptable and said the party would support all efforts to protect the country’s territorial integrity. He urged that the government ensures that there is no recurrence, though he emphasised that the party believes in resolution through peaceful means.

Norton recalled that during the National Assembly debate on the UN Law of the Sea tribunal award, he had directed attention to there being other unresolved issues between the two countries that required attention. He said if the government had foresight it would have crafted a strategy to engage Suriname in the immediate post-award period. Instead, he argued that the government created the conditions for the incident through its inactivity. “We are suffering from a lack of policy,” he said, calling the government’s response lame.

In his comments on the issue yesterday, Trotman told a news conference that diplomacy must be the country’s first response. He said he has urged the head-of-state to ensure that the best minds and experts be deployed to resolve the situation. He affirmed the party’s support for the protection of Guyana’s territorial integrity and, in this context he said the party was prepared to support any initiative the government takes.

Provocative
Meanwhile, in her letters to Caricom Secretary General, Edwin Carrington and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett said the seizure had serious implications for the peace and security of Guyana, in light of several provocative actions undertaken by the military and paramilitary forces of Suriname on the Corentyne River.

Rodrigues-Birkett said in spite of formal protests to Suriname about the harassment of Guyanese vessels plying the Corentyne River to conduct legitimate activities on wharves on Guyana’s shores, the Surinamese Navy  “intercepted, boarded, seized, and transported to a Surinamese port,” the Guyanese vessel which was on its way to uplift and transport a shipment of bulk sugar for export.

The government, she said, has deemed Suriname’s action as a use of force and recalled the eviction of the CGX rig in June 2000 by Suriname’s naval force as being against the economic interests of Guyana. In that case, she said that the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea established that Suriname’s actions “constituted a threat of the use of force in contravention of the Convention (UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), the UN Charter and general international law.”

Rodrigues-Birkett said that the government is concerned that once again Suriname has embarked on an ill-advised policy of the use, or, threat of use of force against the economic interests of Guyana.

She noted that Guyana recently invested over US$100 million to expand the sugar industry in eastern Guyana and described the unhindered use of the Corentyne River as absolutely essential to the survival of the sugar industry and the viability of the recent investments. She explained that it is the only mode by which the inputs for the industry and the exports for the sugar could be economically transported. Without this mode of transportation, she said, the livelihood of over 20,000 families would be directly affected.

Noting that Guyana’s contention that the river, which forms the boundary between the two countries, has always been that both countries have equal rights to its use, she said that since the arbitral award in September last year, Suriname has claimed the entire river. She added that “the efforts to impose Surinamese law and administrative regulations on the use of the river, is without merit and contrary to international customary law in relation to boundary rivers that divide two states.”  

She assured that Guyana is ready to engage Suriname in a dialogue on the matter, but noted that the government sees the actions of Suriname as “extremely provocative and should such actions continue the government of Guyana would have no option but to do whatever is necessary to protect and safeguard its economic and security interests.”