Indigenous Communities Oppose Chinalco Bauxite Mine in Suriname

Indigenous communities in Suriname have sued their government to withdraw an agreement with Chinalco (Aluminum Corporation of China Limited), to dig for bauxite near the village of Bakhuis in the central region of the country.

Chinalco, which is based in Beijing, China, is the world's largest aluminum producer. It has agreed to give the government a 13 percent share in the project that is slated to begin by the middle of 2025 and promised to invest $426 million in Suriname.

Suriname is one of the most densely forested countries in the world, with over 90 percent of its land covered by tropical rainforests that are home to howler monkeys, jaguars, giant river otters and Surinamese harpy eagles, especially in the Bakhuis mountain region.

The Surinamese government has long hoped to exploit the region for bauxite, the principal ore from which aluminum is derived, and a major source of national income in Suriname. To that end, a railway line was built in the 1970s to transport ore from the mountains to the port of Apoera but the plan was abandoned following a military coup.

On November 25, 2024, Dong Jianxiong, vice president of Chinalco, signed an memorandum of understanding with Stanley Raghoebarsing, minister of finance and planning and M David Abiamofo, minister of natural resources, to kickstart a 30-year project to extract six million tons of bauxite annually from a 280,000-hectare site.

This agreement was immediately condemned by local groups.

“Indigenous communities have never been involved through the Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) process,”  Association of Indigenous Village Leaders (VIDS), which represents all 51 Indigenous villages in Suriname, wrote in a press release. "A request was made to suspend the National Assembly hearing until a decision has been made in the substantive proceedings on the legality of the government's contested decision to grant economic mining rights to Chinalco."

“The Chinalco agreement is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Muriel Fernandes, chair of VIDS, wrote in a letter to President Chan Santokhi of Suriname.

The community has won the support of Garcia Paragsingh, the attorney general of Suriname. "I request you to do what is necessary in order to prevent the state of Suriname from suffering damage,” Paragsingh wrote in a letter addressed to government ministers.

Government officials claim that the Chinalco project will boost the local economy. For example, Josta Lewis, the local district commissioner, says that Chinalco will build a hospital and a secondary school, and offer jobs to local villagers.

But others note that Chinalco does not have a good record of fulfilling its promises at other major mining projects in South America.

For example Chinalco extracts copper from the Toromocho mine in the Junín region of Peru, which opened after the company relocated the overwhelming majority of the 5,000 residents of the town of Morococha in 2013.

The company claims that the local people in Morococha are better off.

"Today the population has been resettled to a new city that we built from scratch. It was part of our commitment and social responsibility," Raúl Las Madrid, legal affairs manager for Chinalco Peru Mining, told ProInversion, a Peruvian government agency. "Logically, they have water, drainage, permanent light. There are educational centers, a hospital, and various churches for all faiths."

But Javier Jahncke, secretary general of Red Muqui, a local NGO, disagrees. "It cannot be said that resettlement is complete. All the established guidelines were never fulfilled. They constructed a building, but there is not one worker there,” Jahncke told Dialogue Earth in 2018. “There is an environmental problem with a tailings pond [the Huascocha lagoon, which holds toxic waste].”

A study by the ministry of health in April 2018 found that 27 local children under the age of 12 had lead poisoning.

Last year Jaime Borda, another activist with Red Muqui, told Global Voices website that over a decade after the relocation, local people still suffer from extreme poverty. “Many families have had to migrate to other towns in search of better opportunities since the new town of Morococha does not guarantee a decent life or economic movement,” he said.