Theo Heyliger while in the hospital last month.
PHILIPSBURG--St. Maarten’s highest vote-getter and now suspended Member of Parliament (MP) Theodore Heyliger is said to be blocked from leaving the country to get treatment for his stage one kidney cancer. This is a crystal-clear move by the Dutch colonial authorities to murder her husband – slowly and painfully, his wife Grisha Heyliger-Marten announced in a press release to The Daily Herald on Sunday.
“His stage one cancer tumour and other aggravated health are tagged to extreme stress, with his pre-existing condition added to the mix. The stress is the factor and the pressure and blockage from medical treatment are the Dutch’s weapons to murder Theo,” stated Heyliger-Marten.
Contacted by The Daily Herald on Sunday, the Prosecutor’s Office indicated it had no comment at this time.
Heyliger has lost more than 30 pounds’ weight since his ordeal started in February. He was released from custody in May, but had to surrender his passport to the Prosecutor’s Office and put up cash as a guarantee as terms of his release, and he complied with both these and others.
His wife, in a plea for true justice, said her husband needs to travel to the United States for cancer treatment. This cannot happen without his passport. The Prosecutor’s Office has refused to release his passport. US Immigration cancelled his electronic system for travel authorisation (ESTA) which would allow him to apply for a US (medical) visa. The application cannot happen without his passport to enable him to travel to Curaçao to complete the application.
“The Prosecutor’s Office wants Heyliger to explain why he has to go for a month to Boston [Massachusetts – Ed.]. This is simply ridiculous. They have all the medical documents and the proof of the tumour in his right kidney. They are just continuing to torture him, an act for which they recently have been sentenced by the European Court for Human Rights,” Heyliger-Marten said.
The Heyligers were booked to travel to Boston on Saturday on tickets they bought two weeks ago. Their attorney has worked ever since to get Heyliger’s passport released by the Prosecutor’s Office, to no avail. Heyliger-Marten said she had checked on her husband’s ESTA in the meantime and found it had been cancelled.
“I was prompted to double-check Theo’s ESTA that was approved earlier in the year, prior to his detainment, and I was shocked to see that it was declined. So, we tried to get to the American Embassy in Curaçao to get him a medical visa. Now the prosecutor is saying, since he cannot go to the US, they won’t release the passport,” she said.
“It is back to the drawing board to find another location for Heyliger to see a cancer specialist. They don’t want to give him his passport to fix the issue. They will only give it to him if he finds another location other than the US,” said Heyliger-Marten, who is grappling to understand why the Prosecutor’s Office is so vehement against her husband going to the United States.
The ESTA approval is an automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the visa waiver programme (VWP).
“Theo’s health and safety has been my number one concern from day one. He fell ill later last year and I forced him to do a general check-up. Late in November 2018, it was concluded that he had polyps in his colon, a sort of blockage in his colon and a kidney stone in his right kidney,” Heyliger-Marten said on Sunday.
Heyliger’s detention since February 19 and his transfer to Bonaire on March 1 put additional stress on him, said his wife. “We were able to visit Theo in Bonaire on March 11 and, of course, the first thing I noticed was how frail he looked. Again, my concern was his health. His declining health was linked to the incorrect low dose gout medication they gave him in Bonaire. The meds were not strong enough and left his system to get weaker and weaker.”
Heyliger was returned to St. Maarten and put in the medical ward of the Pointe Blanche prison a month after his transfer to Bonaire. After one month, he was able to see a urologist at St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC). The urologist re-ran tests conducted in November.
The doctor determined that the kidney stone had doubled in size. He later noticed a lesion on the right kidney. The focus was to first get rid of the kidney stone. A week after the operation, the doctor instructed that Heyliger be transferred to the French side for an MRI. The conclusion from that was that the lesion is a three-centimetre malignant tumour, from which it can be determined that he has stage one cancer.
“That tumour was never there in November. It came this year and it got there through stress. Because his tumour is right in the middle of his right kidney, the doctor suggested to do a special procedure that cannot be performed in St. Maarten nor Colombia. He suggested either Holland or the US. Of course, given his situation with the Dutch government, we automatically chose to go the US. That option is now squashed without the release of this passport,” said Heyliger-Mart
