THE HAGUE--Dutch State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops said on Wednesday that he was unpleasantly surprised by the petition of the St. Maarten Parliament to the United Nations (UN) in which the Netherlands is accused of racism and neo-colonisation.
According to Knops, the submitted petition contradicts the earlier committed support of the St. Maarten for the conditions, including the implementation of reforms, that are attached to the Dutch liquidity support for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.
“The petition displays a different sound which is not compatible with earlier statements of the same persons. It was an unpleasant surprise for me. That is why I have asked the St. Maarten government for clarity,” Knops said in a statement provided to The Daily Herald.
Knops said that since the start of the coronavirus crisis, the Netherlands has assisted St. Maarten, as well as the other Dutch Caribbean countries Aruba and Curaçao with a broad support package, consisting of, among other things, medical assistance, food aid for the most vulnerable residents and budget support to cope with the financial adversity. He noted that conditions were only attached to the budget support.
The state secretary referred to St. Maarten’s position as autonomous country and its ability to deal with major crises. “I have come to the conclusion that St. Maarten at this time cannot carry its autonomy. I repeat: I don’t want to take away St. Maarten’s own autonomy. To the contrary: I want to help them so they can fully carry that autonomy in a couple of years.”
Knops said that this was why the Dutch government would be assisting St. Maarten with the implementation of the necessary reforms in a collaboration trajectory that includes a country package and also investments.
The petition that the Parliament submitted was to the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance Tendayi Achiume, and to the Working Group of experts on people of African descent.
The petition seeks to “investigate violations of a UN mandate right to a full measure of self-government for the St. Maarten people.” Twelve of the 15 Members of the St. Maarten Parliament supported the petition.
According to the complaint, the Netherlands uses the pandemic and past hurricanes to “neo-colonially” force St. Maarten to give up its sovereignty. Lawyer Peter Choharis, hired by the St. Maarten Parliament for the UN decolonisation process, told the Dutch Algemeen Dagblad newspaper that the Netherlands has profited for centuries from the islands and that it was the one who created the governing culture. “If corruption and mismanagement are such big problems, whose fault is that?”
