Fort Zeelandia is a fortress in Paramaribo, Suriname, that was built by British colonists (originally called Fort Willoughby) in 1651 around a small trading post, created by the Dutch. It later returned to the Dutch as Nieuw-Amsterdam, later called New York, had been traded for Suriname with the British Empire and it was given its present name in 1667. After the Surinamese independence in 1975, during the military government of Dési Bouterse in the 1980s, it was the scene of the "December murders" of 1982 and was used to hold and torture political prisoners.