Maybe hope for Bonaire
To the Minister of Kingdom Relations and viceminister-president, Mrs Kajsa Ollongren,
PO Box 20018
2500 EA The Hague, the Netherlands.
Bonaire, April 9, 2019
Subject: Minister Kasja Ollongren first introduction to the island of Bonaire
Honorable Minister Ollongren,
As you landed in Bonaire and firsthand experienced a modernized version of a Dutch colony where the Bonaire peoples are governed in a status not of their choosing. An island where the Dutch government is blatantly continuing violating the Charter of the United Nations, international law and fundamental human, self-determination and democratic rights of the peoples. An unprecedented showoff of hypocrisy to pretend to the world that the Dutch stand in defense of human rights and democracy where your government does not respect the democratic voice and decision of the peoples that never choose to be annexed nor integrated and embedded under unequal rights as second class citizens in a colonial status and to be ruled by the Hague. A status that was overwhelming rejected with a No-vote of 66% in the last referendum of 2015 and the recent island council election where your government denied the people of St Eustatius democracy and could not vote, the people of Bonaire protested and boycotted this election as never before and continue showing their unhappiness towards a system a government which is against the wishes of the peoples.
As never before I write this letter with a lot of positivism and hope for our peoples of Bonaire that you as the new minister of Kingdom Relations with your first working visit and introduction to our island will understand our situation and our struggle contrary to all your predecessor ministers of Kingdom relations. All prior ministers and your accompanying state-secretary Mr Knops and us could never reached an understanding or consensus on the most simple fundamental aspect of humanity that we ‘all are born equal in rights and dignity’ and we Bonerians have the same right to be as free and as equal and as human as them the European Dutch.
I expect that you before coming to our island and as my previous letter to you in March 2018 kindly asked you to take note of my various previous letters to the Dutch government in which I am informing your Government that your dictatorial un-democratic course of actions infringes against your own agreed treaties and the international legislation.
Your visit fuels us with reborn hope to be freed from this illegal colonial status imposed on us on October 10, 2010. The reason we put our hope back in a Dutch minister, in your honorable, is because of the compelling facts that you are completely different then your predecessors and you would be able to understand and feel our pain and help us:
You studied and have a MA in history and have the capability to look into our common colonial history and understand this hidden dark truth where the Dutch being a insignificant fishing village became one of worlds richest nations through piracy, smuggling and slave-trading. Your travel-partner mr Knops publicly proclaimed to me during his first visit to Bonaire that he don’t know nothing about our collective colonial past and treaties and human rights and this illegality does not seem to interest him either. However recently Mr Knops admitted based on continues criticism of the Advisory Council of International Affairs (AIV) on violation of the Fundamental Human Rights in the Kingdom that your cabinet has decided to change course, and that Human Rights treaties will now apply not only in the European Netherlands , but also in the Caribbean Netherlands. This good news increases our hopes. Our hope is now fully fixed at you as besides your capability to study and understand the history, what is more compelling, is that your father a Finnish-Swede was born in a Dutch colony, in Sumatra and lived and understood colonialism and that in the 21st century, anno 2019, that colonialism is a crime against humanity declared by the international community and United Nations. As all previous Dutch ministers and statesmen have shown no human-feelings towards us as they see us as as not-equal and not-as-human as themselves and as colonized peoples this could be a deficiency either by mis-education of human values or could be transferred by Dutch-ancestral-DNA. Your ancestry that your are not Dutch but Finnish-Swedish could save us from the current course of systematic eradication , ethnic cleansing of the Bonerians.
Above arguments that you may possess human compassion towards us contrary to your predecessors, we appeal on your humanity not to be accomplice with this crime against humanity and be at the wrong side of history and according to above recent proclamation that your cabinet will change its course and respect our Human Rights to start immediately by respecting and restoring the first and most fundamental human rights of self-determination and right to self-governance of the Bonaire and Statian peoples.
Respectfully yours,
James Finies
We want Bonaire back
