POINTE BLANCHE--All criminal lawyers in St. Maarten will be going on strike from today, Thursday, June 11, because they refuse to be sprayed with disinfectant before being allowed entry to the Pointe Blanche prison to consult with their clients. Dean of the St. Maarten Bar Association Geert Hatzmann announced the strike late Wednesday afternoon in a letter to acting prison director Rikson Martina.
In the letter, a copy of which was sent to Minister of Justice Anna Richardson, the Bar Association’s dean states that lawyers can only enter the prison when they are prepared to be sprayed “with some grimy chemical substance from head to toe.” However, members of the Police Force are not submitted to such anti-coronavirus measure, Hatzmann said.
Spraying someone from head to toe with a chemical substance is a significant violation of their physical integrity, the lawyers say. Therefore, there must be compelling reasons to justify such an infringement, which, the lawyers claim, no longer exist.
They called on the minister and the prison director to immediately halt the spraying of lawyers. As the authorities failed to respond before the deadline of 5:00pm Wednesday, as mentioned in their letter, the lawyers announced their strike.
The strike will continue until the lawyers’ demands are met. The strike means that the lawyers will no longer visit their clients in prison and in the police cells in Philipsburg, and that they will not assist them in Court.
After June 1, St. Maarten reopened rapidly after the lockdown and most security measures that were put in place to combat the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic were lifted.
Also, since June 1, lawyers are allowed to visit their clients in prison again. And rightly so, the lawyers say in their letter, because the virus has been put under control with only a few active cases to date.
According to the striking lawyers, the current situation boils down to the fact that “the rule of law has been taken hostage” because the authorities keep the spraying in place, which the lawyers describe as “disgusting” and “totally meaningless.”
They say the spraying with disinfectant is “degrading and humiliating” and also “discriminatory” because police officers are exempt from such treatment.
Attorney Shaira Bommel had brought the case to the Bar Association’s attention. She declined to undergo treatment with disinfectant prior to visiting her clients A.E.L. (37) and L.I.W. (41), who are facing charges of armed robbery and illegal firearm possession.
Their cases were to be heard in the Court of First Instance on Wednesday, but were postponed until June 17, because the suspects had been unable to consult their lawyer.
