PARAMARIBO--Anne van Leeuwen, the new Ambassador from the Netherlands for Suriname, is not welcome there local media reported on Thursday. According to news website Starnieuws.com, Government has revoked the approval of accreditation for the Ambassador who was supposed to start his tenure in Paramaribo next month.
Suriname’s Government has not issued an official statement on the matter, but according to NOS news in the Netherlands, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that it has received a message from its Suriname counterpart that Van Leeuwen is not welcome. “They did not give us any reason for [withdrawing the approval – Ed.]. We will first analyse the situation,” the NOS report quoted its Foreign Affairs source. NOS suggests that Suriname is barring the Dutch diplomat in response to “continuous Dutch meddling in Surinamese internal affairs.”
Van Leeuwen, a 55-year-old career diplomat who served at the Dutch embassy in Paramaribo from 1993 to 1996, is supposed to return to replace Ernst Noorman, who served as Ambassador to Suriname from September 2014. Noorman actually boarded a flight on Thursday to return to the Netherlands.
During his tenure he was instrumental in restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries that had come to a standstill in 2012 when Suriname’s National Assembly passed an amendment to the Amnesty Law to pardon President Desi Bouterse and fellow defendants in the December Murders Trial. The December Murders regards the killings on December 8, 1982 of 15 opponents of Bouterse’s then military rule.
