WATCH | Netherlands PM Rutte apologises for role of Dutch state in slavery

Prime minister Mark Rutte on Monday apologised on behalf of the Dutch state for its historical role in slavery and consequences he acknowledged continue to this day.

“Today I apologise,” Rutte said in a nationally televised speech at the Dutch National Archives.

“For centuries the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled and stimulated slavery and have profited from it.

“It is true that nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery ... [however] the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering done to those who were enslaved and their descendants.”

The apology comes amid a wider reconsideration of the country's colonial past, including efforts to return looted art and its struggles with racism.

The prospect of an apology on a December afternoon in The Hague had been met with resistance from groups who say it should have come from King Willem-Alexander, in former colony Suriname, on July 1 2023 — the 160th anniversary of Dutch abolition.

“It takes two to tango — apologies have to be received,” said Roy Kaikusi Groenberg of the Honour and Recovery Foundation, a Dutch Afro-Surinamese organisation.

It felt wrong that activists who are descendants of slaves have struggled for years to change the national discussion but had not been sufficiently consulted.

“The way the government is handling this, it's coming across as a neocolonial belch,” he said.

Rutte acknowledged the run-up to the announcement had been handled clumsily and said the Dutch government was sending representatives to Suriname as well as Caribbean islands that remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands with varying degrees of autonomy: Curacao, Sint Maarten, Aruba, Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius.

Silveria Jacobs, prime minister of Sint Maarten, said last week she would not accept an apology without a discussion.

Rutte was responding to a national advisory panel set up after the 2020 killing of George Floyd in the US.

The panel said Dutch participation in slavery amounted to crimes against humanity and in 2021 recommended an apology and reparations. Rutte said his government embraced those conclusions, including that slavery had been a crime against humanity.

He ruled out reparations at a news conference last week, though the Dutch government is setting up a €200m (R3.68bn) educational fund.

Historians estimate Dutch traders shipped more than 500,000 enslaved Africans to the Americas, mostly to Brazil and the Caribbean. As many or more Asians were enslaved in the East Indies, modern Indonesia.

Many Dutch people take pride in the country's naval history and prowess as a trading nation. However, children are taught little of the role in the slave trade played by the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company, key sources of national wealth.

Despite the Dutch reputation for tolerance, racism is a problem.

Citizens of Antillean, Turkish and Moroccan ancestry report high rates of discrimination in their everyday lives and recent studies have shown they face disadvantages in the workplace and in the housing market. 

Reuters