Carrying I.D. on Bonaire

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drrich2

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Location
Southwestern Kentucky
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Hi:

I've been to Bonaire 5 times, 1 week trips each time. A good friend who's always gone with me is now attending medical school at St. James School of Medicine on Bonaire. Students spend about 1 1/2 years doing the main class work portion of medical school on Bonaire, then the remainder of their education in the United States. As they are there over 90 days, they apply for residency permits. When I've been on Bonaire, my buddy did the driving, and would have a driver's license on him. That's often all the I.D. we carried, due to the theft problem afflicting shore divers' rental trucks.

Anyway, St. James has 2 campuses; one in Kralendijk, and one (newer) in Hato. Students in the Kralendijk area can catch a free shuttle bus to commute to and from the Hato campus.

Yesterday, my buddy e-mailed me this:

Our bus got stopped this morning on the way to class for I.D check; half of the bus was taken to jail for not having proper papers of I.D. They were detain for over 2 hours and given warnings to have proper papers at all times. Apparently it is the law that EVERYONE, including natives, have to have I.D's at all times. Lucky for me I carry my papers and passport with me during school days. Later Bud.

I thought it was noteworthy and decided to share it on the forum. I don't know if it was some weird one-time fluke, or the Dutch government is less 'loosey goosey' about people having papers on their person than the island government was, or what.

Richard.
 
May or may not be related, but 2 Fridays ago, I was on island, driving thru downtown, and the police were stopping and thoroughly searching cars and their occupants. After being searched, I was given a little multi-lingual paper explaining that a recently passed law gives them the right to do this in search of illegal firearms. I believe this was one action taken after the recent shooting.
 
May or may not be related, but 2 Fridays ago, I was on island, driving thru downtown, and the police were stopping and thoroughly searching cars and their occupants. After being searched, I was given a little multi-lingual paper explaining that a recently passed law gives them the right to do this in search of illegal firearms. I believe this was one action taken after the recent shooting.

I respect the right of every sovereign nation to protect their own interests and I firmly accept that as a visitor to another country that I am expected to respect and obey their laws. Furthermore I do take comfort from seeing appropriate police action in an effort to prevent lawlessness.

Having said that it would be extreme folly for a island such as Bonaire, that is heavily dependent on tourism, to harass tourists and visitors with aggressive and intimidating searches. I will carry what I usually do which is a photocopy of my ID, PADI cert and DAN card and I am sure that, that should be sufficient. I would like to believe that the police are savvy enough to realize that a diver in a stinky wet suit with a car full of tanks is more likely high on nitro and life than on anything else.
 
This type of news is really not fueling my desire to return to Bonaire! I wonder if this a Dutch deal or just some local bigwig throwing their weight around. Whenever I have been on island I have always put my IDs, passport, and wallet in the safe for the duration. Certainly never took an ID to a dive site. You were much more likely to encounter a thief than a cop.
 
I'm on Island right now and we went through the whole police action at the traffic circle north of town. We were on our way through to dive Slagbaai. It was around 7.30am. Not that this makes anything right, but the police were NOT targeting tourists. It was a sweep targeting undocumented workers. We were waived right through.
 

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