Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologised on Monday on behalf of his executive for the Netherlands’ historic position in slavery and the slave business.
“Today I apologise,” Rutte mentioned in a 20-minute speech that was once met with silence by way of an invited target market on the National Archive in The Hague.
Some campaigners, then again, had recommended the Dutch PM to prolong his speech till subsequent yr, for the a hundred and sixtieth anniversary of the rustic’s abolition of slavery on 1 July.
Ahead of the speech, Waldo Koendjbiharie, a Suriname-born retiree who has lived for years within the Netherlands, mentioned an apology was once no longer sufficient.
“It’s about cash. Apologies are phrases and with the ones phrases you’ll be able to’t purchase anything else,” he said.
Rutte told reporters after the speech that the government is not offering compensation to “other folks — grandchildren or nice grandchildren of enslaved other folks.”
Instead, it is establishing a €200 million fund for initiatives to help address slavery’s legacy in the Netherlands and its former colonies and to promote education about the issue.
During the speech, Rutte apologised “for the movements of the Dutch state prior to now: posthumously to all enslaved other folks international who’ve suffered from the ones movements, to their daughters and sons, and to all their descendants into the right here and now.”
Describing how more than 600,000 African men, women and children were shipped, mostly to the former colony of Suriname, by Dutch slave traders, the PM said that history often is “unsightly, painful, or even downright shameful.”
He also acknowledged the requests to push back his speech until next year.
“We know there is not any one just right second for everyone, no proper phrases for everyone, no proper position for everyone,” he said.
During the 17th century, the Netherlands was one of the world’s wealthiest countries, with its economic growth relying heavily on the slave trade.
The Dutch prime minister’s address was a response to a report published last year by a government-appointed advisory board, which recommended a government apology and recognition of the “crimes towards humanity” committed during the slave trade.
Rutte’s speech comes at a time when many nations’ colonial histories have been receiving heightened scrutiny, especially as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement’s growth following the police killing of George Floyd, an African-American man, in 2020.
In 2018, Denmark apologised to Ghana, which it colonised from the mid-17th to mid-19th century, while in June this year, King Philippe of Belgium expressed “private regrets” for abuses in Congo.
The Netherlands now joins these countries’ ranks.
“We who are living in as of late’s global should recognize the evils of slavery within the clearest imaginable phrases, and condemn it as against the law towards humanity,” Rutte mentioned.
