For the twelve strokes of midnight marking the transition to the year 2024, Élisabeth Borne will be in Guyana. The Prime Minister has in fact planned to spend New Year’s Eve there on December 31 with the armed forces, according to Matignon on Thursday.
The head of government will also stay on January 1 in this department located in the northeast of South America, bordering Suriname and Brazil, but the rest of her program has not yet been communicated. Some 2,200 soldiers and around a thousand gendarmes are currently stationed in Guyana.
Soldiers bereaved twice in 2023 in Guyana
The French army was bereaved twice in this territory this year during missions to combat illegal gold mining. A GIGN major, Arnaud Blanc, 35, was killed on March 25 while he participated with nine comrades in an operation against illegal gold panning on the Dorlin site, in the Amazon forest. A man suspected of belonging to a group of illegal gold mine robbers, involved in the death of this gendarme, was subsequently arrested.
At the beginning of May, a canoeist member of the Armed Forces of Guyana (FAG) died in a canoe accident during a night operation on the Oyapock River (east).