Gangs of men running through the streets with machetes with the intent to kill people of a different ethnicity, raping women, and torching buildings and cars.
This was apparently the scene on Christmas in the small city of Albina, Suriname.
Here is what we know thus far: It all started Thursday in Albina when a Brazilian killed a local man. (Albina is a border town of about 10,000 people between Suriname and French Guiana). In retaliation, between 200 and 300 Surinamese men wielding machetes marched through the town looking to kill Brazilians and torching anything in their way.
The Suriname government said 20 women were raped, one who was pregnant lost her baby in the trauma.
According to a first hand account published in Sunday’s Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, Brazilian Regiana Carneiro de Oliveira said the men running through the streets going door to door looking for Brazilians were yelling, “Let’s go get rid of all Brazilians.”
“They were like animals. It was a scene of war. They were throwing rocks and stabbing people. I saw people all cut on their face. They held some people in rooms in a small hotel, poured gasoline, and set it on fire.” - Regiana Carneiro de Oliveira, who fled attack against Brazilians and Chinese in Albina, Suriname.
Eyewitnesses say the men also turned their rage on Chinese shop owners – who, like the Brazilians, also tried desperately to flee in the surrounding woods for protection.
The nightmare lasted from Thursday night into Friday morning - the town of Albina up in flames. There are no fire stations in town, so fire personnel had to be sent in from the capitol of Paramaribo over 100 kilometre away. Apparently, if there are any police in Albina, they couldn't do anything to stop the violence.
Aftermath pictures here from RadioKatolica.com. Photo rights reserved to RadioKatolica.com.
The Brazilian ambassador to Suriname says 81 Brazilians have been transported to the Suriname capitol of Paramaribo, 25 of which are injured and seven very seriously.
A member of the Catholic Church in Suriname has said 7 Brazilians are dead, and eyewitnesses say 17 people remain missing and feared dead. (The Brazilian Ambassador in Suriname has not yet announced official death toll, and late Sunday after a visit to Albina said he has no confirmed reports of Brazilian dead).
A team of Brazilian officials from the foreign ministry are in Suriname Sunday to assess the situation, flown in on a Brazilian Air Force transport plane from Brasilia.
Suriname as sent in troops to conduct searches and keep the peace, and by all accounts the violence is over. Suriname officials have come out saying they have the forces to protect all foreigners in the country and have already taken people into custody for questioning.
Albina is a garimpeiro town, meaning the place is primarily a base for nomadic gold prospectors. Albina is made up of people from Suriname, French Guiana, China and Brazil.
There are between 15,000 and 18,000 Brazilian nomad gold prospectors in Suriname, or about 4% of the total population of the country, according to Folha. Most live illegally, without proper work papers. These are some of the poorest people, most from the northeast of Brazil.
I have been to a few Brazilian gold prospecting villages, similar to Albina, and there is often a mix of nomadic foreigners. Tensions can grow, but violence such as what was seen in Suriname is uncommon. Last year I was at a gold mine in the Brazilian Amazon, and one of the men I interviewed said if he didn't find gold he was going to go to Suriname, because he heard rumours there was gold there. I can't help but wonder if he was in Albina.
Usually garimpeiros, as they are called, are not bad people. But they often come in conflict with indigenous people in their search to find and then extract gold from usually remote areas. Garimpeiros are simply poor people, and in need of work and know no other way.
"We have nothing back in Brazil," one Brazilian garimpeiro living in Albina, now holed up in a hotel in Paramaribo, told Rio de Janeiro's O Globo newspaper.
Nothing back in Brazil. And likely nothing worth going back to in Albina either.
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