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"We
believe it should be possible to provide the means to be able to
humanely end your own life if you want to and feel it is time,"
Jos van Wijk of Cooperative Last Will, who filed a case together
with 29 individual plaintiffs against the Dutch state, said in
court.
A lawyer for the cooperative said the case is strategic
litigation aimed at forcing the Netherlands to change the laws.
They argue that the current ban on assisting suicide not
overseen by medical professionals violated the right to
self-determination and respect for private life enshrined in the
European convention on human rights.
The Dutch state argued that Dutch euthanasia laws strike a
"careful balance between the duty of the state to protect the
lives of its citizens and the autonomy of people faced with
unbearable suffering with no hope of recovery", attorney Wemmeke
Wisman, appearing for the Dutch state, said.
The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalise
euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide under very strict
conditions and when overseen by medical professionals.
Assisting a suicide, or providing a means to commit suicide
outside of the strict euthanasia criteria, is punishable with a
jail term of up to three years in Dutch law.
Cooperative Last Will has been promoting a suicide powder it
calls "Substance X" since 2018 as a cheap and painless way to
die.
There is a separate ongoing case before the Dutch courts against
a member of the cooperative who is suspected of illegally
assisting suicide by selling "Substance X" to at least 33 people
who later died.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg, editing by Ed Osmond)
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