Dutch PM apologises for Netherlands’ role in slave trade

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/19/dutch-pm-apologises-for-netherlands-role-in-slave-trade


Netherlands
Dutch PM apologises for Netherlands’ role in slave trade
Mark Rutte says Dutch state ‘enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery’ for centuries

02:00
Netherlands PM says sorry for Dutch state role in slavery – video
Jon Henley Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Mon 19 Dec 2022 18.38 GMT
Mark Rutte has offered a formal apology on behalf of the Dutch state for the Netherlands’ historical role in the slave trade, saying slavery must be recognised in “the clearest terms” as a crime against humanity.

In a speech at the national archives in The Hague on Monday, the Dutch prime minister acknowledged the past “cannot be erased, only faced up to”. But for centuries, he said, the Dutch state had “enabled, encouraged and profited from slavery”.

People were “commodified, exploited and traded in the name of the Dutch state”, he said, adding: “It is true nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery … But the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering of those who were enslaved, and their descendants. Today, on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologise for the past actions of the Dutch state.”

Rutte’s words were due to be echoed by Dutch ministers who had travelled to seven former colonies in South America and the Caribbean that suffered untold misery during the 250 years of the slave trade that helped fund the Netherlands’ economic and cultural “golden age”.

The move followed the conclusions of a national advisory panel set up after the 2020 killing of George Floyd in the US, which said Dutch participation in slavery had been a crime against humanity deserving of a formal apology and financial reparations. The government has ruled out reparations, but will set up a €200m educational fund.

Its formal apology, however, has caused considerable controversy, with descendants’ groups and some of the countries affected criticising it as rushed and arguing that the lack of consultation from the Netherlands showed colonial attitudes still persisted.

Campaigners have said an apology should instead come from the Dutch king, Willem-Alexander, and be made in the former colony of Suriname, on 1 July next year, the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery there. Rutte said choosing the right moment was a “complicated matter” and there was “not one right time for everyone”.

Slavery was formally abolished in all Dutch overseas territories on 1 July 1863, making the Netherlands one of the last countries to outlaw the practice, but it took a further decade to end in Suriname because of a mandatory 10-year transition period.

The prime minister of the Dutch Caribbean territory of Sint Maarten, Silveria Jacobs, told Dutch media at the weekend that the island would not accept any government apology “until our advisory committee has discussed it and we as a country discussed it”.

A Sint Maarten activist, Rhoda Arrindell, said: “We’ve been waiting for a few hundred years for true reparatory justice. We believe that we can wait a little further.”

Roy Kaikusi Groenberg of the Honour and Recovery Foundation, a Dutch Afro-Surinamese organisation, said there had not been enough consultation with descendants, describing the government’s handling of the issue as a “neocolonial belch.”

The Netherlands has taken time to address its colonial past, adding the history of Dutch slavery to the school curriculum only in 2006. “There is a sector in society that really clings to colonial pride,” said Karwan Fatah-Black, of the University of Leiden.

Historians estimate that at the height of its 16th- to 17th-century empire, Dutch traders shipped up to 600,000 enslaved Africans to South American and Caribbean colonies such as Suriname and Curaçao, and as many or more to South Africa and East India, modern-day Indonesia.

Dutch cabinet ministers were in Suriname, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, Aruba, Curaçao, Saba, and Sint Eustatius to “discuss the cabinet response and its significance on location with those present” after Rutte’s speech, the government said.

The first major Dutch foray into slavery was in 1634, when an initial 1,000 people were abducted from the Gold Coast – today’s Ghana – to Brazil by the Dutch West India Company to work on its plantations.

The Caribbean island of Curaçao, captured the same year, became a slave-trading hub and in 1667 the Dutch seized Suriname, on the north-east coast of South America, turning it into a plantation colony heavily dependent on slave labour from Africa.

In the Indian Ocean and Asia the Dutch East India Company brought enslaved people mainly to Cape Town from modern-day Madagascar, and to modern-day Indonesia from the Indian subcontinent.

At its height in the 1770s, historians have calculated slavery accounted for more than 10% of the gross domestic product of Holland, the richest of the seven Dutch provinces that made up the then United Provinces of the Netherlands.

Dutch cities including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht have apologised for their roles in the slave trade and the government had previously expressed “deep regret” but stopped short of a formal apology.

Rutte said on Monday that the year from next July would be a slavery memorial year in which the country would “reflect on this painful history”.

The Dutch prime minister’s remarks follow Denmark’s 2018 apology to Ghana, which it colonised from the mid-17th to the mid-19th century, and King Philippe of Belgium’s “deepest regrets” for abuses in Congo, expressed in June this year.

MPs in Belgium failed, however, to reach a consensus on Monday on how to formulate an apology for the notoriously bloody excesses of the country’s rule in what is now DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.

They had been due to meet to approve 128 recommendations from a commission set up to examine Belgium’s record in its former central African colonies, but in the end none went to a vote. The left said their liberal coalition partners had refused to approve a report including an apology.

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Wiseandtrue:
This is what I expected from Britain

exactly.

Instead of going over the world looking for more places to do advanced colonization.

And spreading wars all over the world.

No point

The financial and resources colonization they are doing on Africa, when will they stop

thebosstrevor1:
The financial and resources colonization they are doing on Africa, when will they stop

Exactly. When you listen to what Al-Mustapha has been saying, you will know that these oyinbo apologies are just for show.

Saying sorry means nothing

If you are truly sorry make payment ...or at least help restructure Africa along its ethnic lines let them form nations organically

But no ...the useless border lines you drew kills millions yearly

The countries you created and made impossible to function make millions poor everyday


Europeans knew exactly what they were doing ...created countries then told them to run it like nations

Only apology accepted is for Netherlands become visa free

ItsTutsi:
Only apology accepted is for Netherlands become visa free

Abi o? So we can go there and enjoy OUR money.

The dutch eeh, I count them as the smartest people on earth.

Wiseandtrue:
This is what I expected from Britain

Don't hold your breath.

ItsTutsi:
Only apology accepted is for Netherlands become visa free

Seriously the Netherlands is far better than any other bandit especially the ruthless french n British. Atleast they give alot waiver to their former colonies especially in south America n Indonesia. They have some form of special program for those countries.

Good. We expect more of this and much more going forward from other countries that played prominent roles during the slavery. This also includes African countries, kingdoms , clans, etc; they ought to apologize.
In cases where they directly or indirectly provided ammunition and support for wars and pogroms, such as in the case of the Nigeria civil war, adequate compensation should be made. It may take years but it must be done one day. So, the sooner the better.

Ckonnet:
The dutch eeh, I count them as the smartest people on earth.

More like trickish.

Video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVKMbzqZm30

Apologies are easy. Reparations are the difficult part.

Napata77:


More like trickish.

Apology is fine but insufficient. What about reparations?

Firstcitizen:


Apology is fine but insufficient. What about reparations?

yes Africa needs the money.

The whites really dealt with us.

The only way Africans can accept this apology and the one that'll come from France and Britain in the near future is to stop Modern-day slavery that they've put Africa in.



You cannot interfere with our elections, install a puppet and provide financial aid for these puppets, because the common man do not benefit from it in anyway, and steal our resources in the form of trade to benefit yourselves, then come out to say you're sorry for what your ancestors did, without changing but modernizing?

If this things continues only a handful of countries who could break themselves from this influence will progress because I don't see countries in Africa being called a second world country or a first world country in the next 100years

Until they start preaching self-determination to us and treating us with Egalitarianism I'll never see them as friends.