The Netherlands have taken the plunge. Batavian Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized to the Dutch state for the kingdom’s slavery past on Monday in The Hague.
With our regional correspondent, Pierre Benazet
The Netherlands abolished slavery in 1863 in its then colonies, but for 160 years the Dutch state has never admitted the suffering inflicted on those enslaved. This is essentially what Mark Rutte is saying. The Dutch Prime Minister presented the official apologies of the Netherlands for centuries of trafficking until 1814 with at least 600,000 African slaves transported by Batavian ships to Suriname, but also to the Netherlands Antilles: Aruba, Saba, Saint -Martin, Saint-Eustache, Bonaire and Curaçao.
” For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives enabled, encouraged, perpetuated and profited from slavery. For centuries people have been dehumanized, exploited and abused in the name of the Dutch state. For centuries, under the authority of the Dutch state, human dignity has been trampled on in the most appalling ways, says Dutch PM “said the Batavian Prime Minister.
He also added that ” too few successive Dutch governments after 1863 have seen and acknowledged the negative impact of the slavery past. I apologize on behalf of the Dutch government “.
Ministers dispatched to the territories
Dutch ministers had also been dispatched to these seven territories on Monday to echo the statements of the Prime Minister and Mark Rutte apologized in the languages spoken in the West Indies and Suriname, Papiamento and Sranan Tongo.
These are also excuses for all that slavery has spawned racist stereotypes, discrimination, exclusion and social inequality. According to Mark Rutte, for centuries people have been dehumanized, exploited and abused in the name of the Dutch state.
On July 1, 2023, the Netherlands will begin a year of commemoration. In Belgium, the Parliamentary Commission on the Colonial Past ends its work with an acknowledgment of failure for lack of consensus on possible apologies to present to Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC.
►Also read: Slavery: the countries that apologized and those that did not