Emmanuel Macron is expected in Guyana on Monday. This territory is facing multiple challenges, including the fight against illegal gold mining, which is a real ecological scourge in this French department.
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Emmanuel Macron is in Guyana on Monday March 25 for an express visit, 48 hours on site. The opportunity to pay tribute to Major Arnaud Blanc, member of the GIGN, killed during an operation to combat illegal gold panning. A real scourge, which destroys the environment and disfigures the forest in this French department the size of Portugal.
To find the Foreign Legion and Operation Harpie, you must board Captain Clément’s canoe and follow the mangrove swamp on the Approuague River. “The river is very wide. To put it simply, it’s a bit like a river highwayexplains the soldier. The boats are capable of sailing at 80 km/h if they are empty. Afterwards, you have to add around two to three tonnes of freight when they go back up, they will sail at around 50 km/h. It’s already huge on a river.”
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Ten tons of gold extracted by illegal gold panning
A river highway that allows the Garimpeiros – this is the nickname of gold miners in Guyana – to organize themselves in convoys like go-fasts to bring their cargoes of gold to Brazil or the coast. Except that, since November 2022, the gendarmes and soldiers of the Guyanese armed forces have cut the road thanks to a roadblock, installed at Saut Tourépé.
“Any forceful passage involves passing the 180 m of blood sausage with scattered points to disembowel any canoe that tries to cross the dam. No opposing canoe has attempted to do this, but if they did, it would sink in about two or three minutes. “
Captain Clementat franceinfo
This dam, in the south-east of Guyana, has therefore made it possible to reduce a gold panning hub to almost nothing. One hundred and twenty canoes, loaded with gold or empty, transited here every month before November 2022, none today.
This checkpoint is therefore the nerve center of the French military to fight against illegal gold panning. Some 30 soldiers from the Foreign Legion live day and night in makeshift sheet metal shelters. “The most dangerous fauna for us here are mainly small insects, but which are very venomous like snakes or spidersexplains Captain Arthur who provides the visit. Then you have here the stocks of drinking water rations and gasoline to run the generators.”
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Despite these Spartan conditions, this checkpoint also serves as a rear base because the fight against illegal gold panning is done a lot on foot and to do this, you have to walk for hours and hours in the heart of the forest. In small groups, these gendarmes and legionnaires destroyed camps, generally made flagrant calls and also noticed that the river dam was bypassed by the ground. “There was really this logic and a bit of the Wild West with the effects of the operationsays Captain Arthur. Now they are forced to have fun further and further away. They occupy informal structures that are not stable over time.” Even if the dam has helped to reduce traffic, there are still around 300 illegal construction sites in Guyana. Every year, ten Tons of gold are extracted while it is only one ton for legal gold panning.
Nearly 8,000 gold miners operate in Guyana
These gold miners therefore have the particularity of knowing the terrain very well. They are almost exclusively men, 95% Brazilians even if there are also a few Surinamese. In total, there are almost 8 000 gold miners operating in Guyana. Clearly, only profiles accustomed to this very hostile environment. “It will be dissociated networks of canoe smugglers”develops Captain Clément.
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“These are essentially people who are from the river, who have this knowledge of the river. Here, it is very wide, it is navigable, but you have to imagine certain creeks where there are rocks on the surface everywhere. So you need a certain technicality, a knowledge of the river.”
Generally, gold miners are also linked to drug trafficking and belong to gangs. Hence an almost sprawling organization, says Captain Arthur: “There is a kind of mutual and reciprocal admiration between the gold miners and the legionnaires. We find that they carry monstrous loads. They find that we are nevertheless extremely discreet. There are gold miners who spend eleven months on twelve in the forest. What impressed me the most on a mission was arriving at a camp with a little girl aged 2 years. Her mother explained to me that she was born here and that she had never known anything else, that is to say that she gave birth in the forest.”
“In terms of hardiness and endurance in the forest, they are very, very impressive.”
Captain Arthurat franceinfo
In short, profiles which make arrests difficult, even if the gendarmerie claims 224 people in police custody in 2023 and 95 people imprisoned in Cayenne. This is the best record since the start of Operation Harpie in 2008.