Dear Editor,
I read with much interest, a letter written by James Finies, the President of the “We Want Bonaire Back Foundation,” which appeared in the online news magazine “Caribbean News Now.” This letter highlighted a growing trend that’s been happening in the Dutch Caribbean islands of Statia and Bonaire.
As an indigenous Anguillian, my fellow Anguillians and I must be concerned, for today it’s our neighbors to the North and South and tomorrow it could be us. I’m mostly concerned because in Anguilla, we are a British Overseas Territory and as such are likely to suffer the same fate as our two Dutch cousins.
One could clearly see that there’s more than meets the eye here. Could it be that the mother country Holland has finally come to the realization that they are sitting on goldmines in the Caribbean and are finally looking for a way to backdoor themselves into what they truly want to do by blaming the locally elected governments as being inept and corrupt?
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Finies that his letter should serve as a warning to all Caribbean peoples. Statia and Bonaire are the canaries in the coal mines. When we see something as blatant as what Holland is doing and what the British and our government are likely to do, when they are allowed to cherry-pick those elements of our constitution without any debate, just to enhance their chances for another term of office, this is wrong. Is this what our forefathers fought for?
Anguillians like corn stalks or potato vines we are being slowly ploughed under and we don’t even know it. You must remember from whence you came in order to know where you are going. Anything else is tantamount to pushing a rope up a hill.
In the Caribbean we are all as different as day is from night, and though we hardly ever agree on anything, this is one time that we must heed the warnings of what is happening to our Dutch cousins.
What is happening to them is a form of genocide, a trait that we in Anguilla are very familiar with. The natives are slowly being disenfranchised and it’s being done in a way that is subtle and nuanced. Now I know that the majority of us don’t get subtlety and nuance, but it’s time we take stock in what’s happening to us and by extension around the world.
As a Caribbean people, we have got to be cognizant of what’s going on and recognize that it’s only a matter of time before they, the mother countries, rid themselves of enough of us to where we become guests in our own homeland.
Today it’s Holland bullying two of its smallest territories with a third, St. Maarten in its crosshairs, because of what they claim are corrupt governments. Tomorrow it will probably be the British coming into Anguilla for what they perceive as lawless behavior and large-scale corruption.
What is happening to our Dutch cousins according to Mr. Finies is the repatriation of its territories, the neutralization of the local population to have a say in their own governance and the right by a European population to vote in local elections after living on the island for a very short time. Mr. Finies characterizes what he sees happening to Statia and Bonaire as ethnic cleansing.
While the Holland’s attempts to re-colonize its overseas territories are now finally coming into view, the British have been doing so now for the longest while in Anguilla. Our problem is that we have a government that’s operating under a cloud of secrecy. We are none the wiser when it comes to what’s going on in our backyard. Our government seems to be buying part and parcel everything that the Foreign Commonwealth Office throws our way with little regard for how we feel.
In the last White Paper, the Foreign Commonwealth Office finally admitted that Anguilla was an important asset to the United Kingdom and so it stands to reason, according to Mr. Finies, that Statia and Bonaire are of similar value to Holland as well.
We in the Caribbean can never agree on anything, except that we are different. We don’t have to like each other, but we can agree that like NATO, an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and if we see an illegal power grab against one, we must take it as an illegal power grab against all. As the saying goes, today for me, tomorrow for you.
In the Caribbean, we are now seen as being valuable to our mother countries. Britain saw fit to grant the majority of her former colonies their independence, while holding on to the smaller possessions, which were considered either too small to go out on their own, or as in our case in Anguilla, did not want independence.
Whatever the reason(s), they are stuck with us and what will happen to us now with the failure of Brexit is anyone’s guess. What is true is that the Brits want Britain Back which I read as code for make Britain white again, the same way Donald Trump wants to make America great again.
One has to wonder if the Dutch territories of Holland were populated with people with Eurocentric looks, would Holland show as much distrust of them as they are now showing our brown-skin cousins. Do they not trust our cousins to do the right thing?
We can’t continue to sit around with our heads in the sand like the ostrich saying, “Well, that doesn’t affect me.” We are all in this together. Our mother countries know that we probably don’t have the wherewithal to fight and so they’ve chosen to go ahead with this re-colonization.
I agree with Mr. Finies, that they want our land and our resources. What happens to us then? Where is the outcry?
Until next time, may God bless us all.
Tyrone Hodge
