Press release July
1, 2020
As we commemorate
July 1st, 1863 abolition of slavery or emancipation day in the Dutch
colonies, and almost all the Caribbean and world is in a post-colonial era, our
island Bonaire and the other Dutch Caribbean islands up to today remained Dutch
colonies. As the Dutch were about the last in 1863 to abolish slavery almost a
century later, after other Caribbean islands , the Dutch misinformed and
manipulated the international community that they finished the decolonization
process and stop reporting to the UN in 1954 and continued with colonization of
the Dutch Caribbean islands up to now.
Today July 1, 2020 we are making a dramatic call to the Dutch
government to abolish colonialism in the
Dutch Caribbean islands.
Foundation We Want Bonaire Back on its continuing mission to
raise awareness on the un-democratic situation on our island Bonaire
participated recently in the first Caribbean and Latin American Peoples Online Conference
The Caribbean Peace Movement , the Caribbean Movement for
Peace and Integration, the Christian Workers Union of Belize, the Jamaica Peace
Council and the Global Afrikan Congress organized this first Caribbean and
Latin American Peoples online conference with the support of several civil
society and grassroots organizations from across the region.
This conference that was planned originally to conquer
simultaneously with the yearly CARICOM heads of State conference, due to the
non-travel situation in the Caribbean and the world this year conference was
organized online on the COVID-19 Experience and Lessons aiming towards a
regional peoples network supporting Integration, Peaceful Cooperation and
Resilience against environmental and health threats.
Representatives from civil society and grassroots organizations, ambassadors, journalists,
lawyers, union leaders, economists, researchers, professors, medical
scientists, professionals, human rights activists, deans and presidents of
universities, psychiatrists, from Cuba,
Nicaragua, Venezuela, Jamaica, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines, USA,
Martinique, Haiti, Brazil, Barbados, Bonaire participated in this historic
conference.
Summary of the declaration to carry forward the mission in the
legacy of our ancestors:
The
peoples of Latin America and Caribbean have a common history. Despite our
differences in language which are legacies of colonialism that tend to divide
and keep us apart, our history unites us around the common goal of overcoming
the vestiges of domination by the metropoles. These vestiges of colonialism
include the plundering of our natural resources, under-development of our
economies, and the deliberate distortion of ‘our story’ in order to keep us in
our places.
As
it becomes our time now to reclaim our rightful place among humanity we need to
walk in the footsteps of our Caribbean and Latin American leaders as Simon
Bolivar, Toussiant L'Ouverture and all other leaders that hereafter emerged.
Unification of our people is the most critical step towards integration and
cooperation and are the indispensable components of our struggle to move
forward and regain real genuine peoples developments for our Americas.
James Finies from Bonaire as panelist explained the undemocratic
situation of Bonaire since the illegal annexation by Holland on October 10, 201
of the BES islands, and that Holland is using the corona-crisis now to extort,
force Curacao, Aruba and St Maarten to surrender their limited autonomy back to
The Hague government and that during this COVID-19 crisis it became more clear
what is to be colonized as all the important decisions are made in The Hague ,
Holland. The conference decided and
committed that from now on special focus will be put to monitor and support the
struggles for decolonization of all countries within the region and elsewhere
across the globe.
