"Eighty Brazilians attacked by residents of the Surinamese border town Albina," reports a TV station in the northern Brazilian city of Belim. According to a CNN iReport weblog, at least ten people were killed during "a Christmas Eve of terror".

Four days after the Christmas Eve riots in the town of Albina in eastern Surinam on the border with French Guiana, there are still no definite reports of exactly how many people lost their lives. The police have confirmed one death, a man stabbed by a Brazilian in an argument over money. It was this incident that sparked frenzied revenge attacks by the region’s original inhabitants, primarily targeting Brazilians and Chinese.

Machetes
The victims were attacked with machetes, women were raped in their homes, in the street and in cars, shops were looted and burned. According to Father José Vergilio da Silva, injured Brazilians drowned as they tried to flee by leaping into the river. 135 people have been evacuated to the Surinamese capital Paramaribo, where they are staying with friends or in hotels. In Paramaribo’s Brazilian enclave the atmosphere is sombre.

Journalist and teacher Hugo den Boer has been living in the area for eight years. “It’s astonishing,” he says, "that people will greet you cheerfully in the street, people you saw looting and burning the day before."

Smuggling
It is becoming apparent that the attack in eastern Surinam has uncovered a complex problem, which the authorities have been ignoring for years. Ironically, the incident which sparked the violence lies at the heart of the “eastern Surinam question”. The row between the two men was reportedly over an overdue payment for smuggling between Brazil and French Guiana.

The French have tightened their border controls in recent years to combat illegal gold trafficking. However, on the Surinamese side of the border, there is barely any control, but plenty of corruption. Chinese, Brazilians and Dominicans have been able to carry on the gold trade here freely. "The Wild West in the east," is the way Albina is scornfully referred to in Paramaribo. It is "a city without a heart" according to sociologist Marten Schalkwijk. "No one takes responsibility."

Holiday resort
Once the town on the banks of the Marowijne River was a popular holiday resort. But the 1989 civil war between dictator Desi Bouterse and rebel leader Ronnie Brunswijk left it deserted and in ruins. Life returned slowly – a shop, a restaurant, the market. The regional government is based in Moengo, a mining town 50 kilometres to the west, and Albina was left to fend for itself. There was no integrated reconstruction policy for this melting pot of refugees, their children, and a colourful collection of gold diggers and fortune hunters from Brazil or China.

Brothel
A brothel for tired gold-hunting garimpeiros, gold, drugs and human trafficking, child labour – these are all to be found in the once so appealing resort of Albina. In a television interview, Caprino Allendy, leader of the Brotherhood and Unity in Politics party, said he gave a warning six months ago about this Sodom and Gomorrah on the border with French Guiana. Mr Allendy is a member of the governing coalition and deputy chairman of the National Assembly.

However, what he failed to mention was that the French authorities have been waiting for a year for his parliament to ratify a treaty on joint border control. Justice Minister Chandrikapersad Santhoki is equally aware of this, but he immediately went on the defensive when on Christmas Day he was questioned about the absence of law and order in Marowijne.

Trauma
On 28 December, in an end-of-year speech to the police Mr Santhoki set out his policy achievements: a new fire station is under construction in Albina and the police force is to be enlarged. However, the plans were no help in preventing the Christmas Eve violence, and do nothing to alleviate the trauma of the raped women, injured men and ruined shopkeepers.
 

(RNW translation: mb)
 

Lead photo: Albina in 2008 (Wikipedia)