Dear Editor,
Bonaire, an island in the Southern Caribbean, is lobbying the United Nations and the World to re-list it on the Non-Self-Governing Territories List of the United Nations protective list.
As President of the NKBB – We Want Bonaire Back non-governmental organisation (NGO), and a professional commercial banker and past President of NGO Platform Bonaire, I abandoned my professional life and turned human rights activist full-time, where I started to lobby the Dutch government to be transparent and accountable in its governance of the people of Bonaire for the past 18 years. There is a new wave of European re-colonization of the Caribbean and the Americas – bribing and blackmailing our people.
As part of my activism, I demonstrated in the rain and sun without leaving, sleeping outside Bonaire’s Governor’s Office in 2014-2015 for eight months, demanding a referendum so that the people can choose their own future. After the dissolution of the Netherland Antilles on October 10, 2010, the people were forced to be part of Holland without equal rights.
I sacrificed myself for my country and the people to get a referendum, in which I succeeded. On December 18, 2015, the government of Bonaire had no choice but to give in and hold a referendum in order for me to stop protesting and go home. In that referendum, the people of Bonaire voted overwhelmingly, with 65 per cent rejecting the present illegal constitutional status of Bonaire. However, instead of respecting the wishes of a nation, Holland’s Parliament decided to annex and embed/anchor Bonaire and its people into the Dutch Constitution with unequal rights whilst the local politicians in the Netherland Antilles and the world did nothing.
The upcoming fourth symposium “The Political Future, the Right of Self-determination and Reparation in the Caribbean IV” conference is expected to play a significant role in creating awareness and consciousness of our inherited and acquired decolonisation rights and our Caribbean history and the role our ancestors played over 300 years ago. Importantly, the NKBB NGO is hoping to make more awareness of the illegal colonial status the Bonaire people find themselves in after 10-10-10.
Some 12 islands around the Caribbean and the Guianas are invited and I hope more people will be aware of this conference and will attend, which is scheduled in Bonaire, former Netherlands Antilles, downtown Kralendijk on December 6, 7 and 8.
I actively encourage persons, activist groups, NGOs and organisations to participate from throughout the Caribbean. Invitees include Puerto Rico, Anguilla, St. Maarten, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Curaçao, Barbados, San Andres and Providencia Islands, Aruba, St. Eustatius, US Virgin Islands, Grenada and Jamaica.
We want to see meaningful results coming out of these conferences. Here on Bonaire, we were never taught in schools about our colonial history and of the real history of our ancestors, but only the heroic stories of our colonisers and oppressors, Holland’s history. Until today, some of our people do not know that they were descendants of slaves, some rejected the fact. It all boils down to, that we were not taught in the classrooms about our ancestors and their sacrifice they endured for us.
The main objective is that the conference will focus on areas of mutual benefit to the peoples of the Caribbean and the Guianas; to explore the uplifting of Bonaire and the Dutch, French and British Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Independent Caribbean Islands and by building bridges between Caribbean and Caribbean people in the Diaspora to aspire and realise our rightfully Caribbean decolonisation, reparations and integration.
James Finies
President of the NKBB – We Want Bonaire Back
