THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday apologized on behalf of his government for the Netherlands’ role in slavery and the slave trade, in a speech hailed by activists as historic but devoid of concrete plans for reform and reparations.
“Today I apologize,” Rutte said in a 20-minute speech that was met with silence by an invited audience at the National Archives.
Before the speech, Waldo Koendjbiharie, a pensioner born in Suriname but living for years in the Netherlands, said an apology was not enough.
It’s a question of money. Apologies are words and with those words you can’t buy anything,” he said.
Rutte told reporters after the speech that the government did not offer compensation to “people – grandchildren or great-grandchildren of slaves”.
Instead, it is creating a 200 million euro ($212 million) fund for initiatives to address the legacy of slavery in the Netherlands and its former colonies and to strengthen education. On the question.
Rutte apologized “for the actions of the Dutch state in the past: posthumously to all slaves around the world who suffered from these actions, to their daughters and sons, and to all their descendants here and now” .
Describing how more than 600,000 African men, women and children were shipped, “like cattle”, mostly to the former colony of Suriname, by Dutch slave traders, Rutte said the story is often “ugly , painful and even downright shameful”.
Rutte apologized even though some activist groups in the Netherlands and its former colonies had urged him to wait until July 1 next year, the anniversary of the abolition of slavery there. 160 and said they had not been sufficiently consulted in the process leading up to the speech. Activists are planning the 150th anniversary next year as many slaves were forced to continue working in factories for a decade after abolition.
Mitchell Esajas, director of an organization called The Black Archives and a member of the Black Manifest activist group, did not attend the speech despite being invited due to what he called a “most insulting” lack of consultations. with the black community.
He said it was a historic moment but lamented the lack of a concrete plan for reparations.
“Repair wasn’t even mentioned,” Esajas said. “So nice words, but it’s unclear what the next concrete steps will be.”
Rutte’s delivered his speech at a time when the brutal colonial histories of many countries have come under critical scrutiny due to the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of George Floyd, a black man, in the city. American from Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
The prime minister’s speech was a response to a report published last year by a government-appointed advisory council. Its recommendations included government apologies and recognition that the slave trade and slavery from the 17th century until abolition “which occurred directly or indirectly under Dutch authority were crimes against humanity”.
The report says what it calls institutional racism in the Netherlands “cannot be separated from the centuries of slavery and colonialism and the ideas that arose in this context”.
Dutch ministers fanned out on Monday to discuss the issue in Suriname and the former colonies that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands – Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten as well as three Caribbean islands that are officially private municipalities in the Netherlands. , Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba .
In Suriname, the small South American nation where Dutch plantation owners have generated huge profits through the use of bonded labor, the largest opposition party, the NPD, has condemned the government Dutch for failing to adequately consult the descendants of slaves in the country. Country activists say what is really needed is compensation.
“The NPD therefore expresses its disapproval of this one-sided decision-making process and notes that the Netherlands is comfortably taking over the role of mother country,” the party said in a statement.
The year beginning July 1, 2023 will be a commemorative slavery year in which the Netherlands will “pause to reflect on this painful history. And on how this history still plays a negative role in life many people today,” the government says.
The Dutch first became involved in the transatlantic slave trade in the late 1500s and became a major trader by the mid-1600s. Eventually the Dutch West India Company became the largest slave trader transatlantic,” said Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and assistant professor at Leiden University.
In 2018, Denmark apologized to Ghana, which it colonized from the mid-17th century to the mid-19th century. In June, King Philippe of Belgium expressed his “deepest regrets” for the abuses in Congo. In 1992, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Church’s role in slavery. Americans had emotional battles to tear down statues of slave owners in the South.
Now the Netherlands have joined their ranks.
But for some in the black community, this remarkable day was tinged with disappointment.
“For many people it’s a very beautiful and historic moment but with – in Dutch we say – a bitter taste… and it should have been a historic moment with a sweet taste,” Esajas said.
___
Gerold Rozenblad in Paramaribo, Suriname, contributed.
___
Read all AP stories on race issues at https://apnews.com/hub/racial-injustice.
0 Comments