The comitee ‘commemorating Surinamese victims’ has written a letter to King Philippe of Belgium and urged him not to attend the award ceremony of the Dutch Literary prize that will be held in the royal palace in Brussels this autumn. The prize is awarded once every three years by the Dutch or Belgian monarch and is the most prestigious literary award in the Dutch language area.
This year the Dutch language union (Taalunie) had awarded the prize to the Surinamese author Astrid Roemer. It has become controversial as mrs Roemer supports former dictator and former president Bouterse of Suriname. Last week she said she posted on facebook that he was important for the self esteem of the people of Suriname and she said she would not refer to him as a murderer.
Her reference relates to the fact that the fmr president is held responsible for the December murders in 1982, where 15 Surinamese opponents of his military dictatorship were tortured and murdered. He was convicted by the Surinamese military court in 2019.
The comittee has urged the King not to attend the ceremony as it would not be appropriate to mark the occassion in the usual manner by his presence.
Mrs Roemer defended herself on television by saying that the families of the victims belong to the elite of Paramaribo and have influenced the way people look at the murders & Bouterse’s role. She added that the president in her view was not a murderer as he did not personally murder his opponents.
The language comittee -who should have seen this coming- does not seem to want to retract the award. They argue that mrs Roemer received the prize due to her literary talents.
A few years ago there was a small controversy around Queen Máxima, who posed in a photo at the UN with the wife of mr Bouterse. The palace said that the queen did not know that she was posing with the wife of the president. Bouterse is a highly controversial figure in The Netherlands, where there is a large community of people with Surinamese roots.
