The parliament of the former Dutch colony of St Maarten is accusing the Netherlands of having a ‘neo-colonial’ and ‘racist’ attitude for attaching conditions to a coronavirus aid package and has filed an official complaint with the UN rapporteur on racism.

The MPs claim the Netherlands is using the pandemic and the earlier devastation of the Caribbean island by hurricane Irma to make aid dependent on reforms, the AD reports.

St Maarten, the Dutch part of which comprises around a third of the island, has been an independent country within the kingdom of the Netherlands since 2010 but the Dutch state still has a say in a number of its decisions. It recently thwarted an attempt by St Maarten to borrow money on the open capital market because it was too expensive, the paper said.

The Dutch are currently planning to set up a monitoring body, whose members are to be appointed by the Dutch government, to oversee reforms such as cutbacks, labour reform, more efficient tax collections and to tackle criminal influences in the island.

The St Maarten MPs said they welcomed most of the reforms but not the monitoring body which they say would mean giving up sovereignty.

‘Three deputies will be running St Maarten and we will have nothing to say,’ MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten, who is one of the complainants, told the AD. ‘It feels like slavery all over again. It’s as if someone comes into my house and orders me to pick up that towel. Do this, do that. But I am an autonomous adult.’

Junior foreign affairs minister Raymond Knops said he was ‘unpleasantly surprised’ by the complaint to the UN and has asked the St Maarten government for an explanation.

Functioning

‘I have had to conclude that St Maarten at the moment is not able to function fully autonomously. I repeat: we do not want to take away the island’s autonomy but to help it assume full autonomy in the years to come. That is why we are assisting the authorities in bringing about these reforms,’ Knops told the paper.

Dutch socialist MP Ronald van Raak has asked the junior minister to suspend the support to the island for the time being. He said he feared the reforms will not be carried out if the St Maarten parliament refuses to cooperate. He also wants a referendum on the independence of St Maarten.

According to American law firm Choharis, which is representing the MPs, the final aim for the St Maarten politicians is to enter into a new discussion about the relationship with the Netherlands and to end the process of decolonisation. ‘The current status, as an independent country within the kingdom, simply doesn’t work,’ a representative of the firm told the paper.