(Amsterdam) The King of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander issued his official apology on Saturday for his country’s involvement in slavery, saying he felt “personally and extremely” affected.
“Today I stand before you as a king and a member of the government. Today I apologize to you personally,” Willem-Alexander said to cheers at an event marking 150 years since slaves were freed in the former colonies.
Thousands of descendants of people enslaved in the former South American colony of Suriname as well as the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao attended these celebrations.
“I feel this deeply in my heart and in my soul,” the king said, before adding, “The slave trade and slavery are recognized as crimes against humanity.”
“The kings of the House of Orange (from which the current monarch descends, editor’s note) did nothing to prevent it. Today, I apologize for this inaction,” added Willem-Alexander.
Commemorations marking the real end of slavery in the colonies take place every year in Amsterdam, a celebration called “Keti Koti”, or “breaking the chains” in Sranantongo (one of the languages of Suriname).
The commemorations are the first of their kind since the government issued a formal apology in December for the Netherlands’ slavery past.
The king’s speech delivered from Amsterdam’s Oosterpark was broadcast live on national television.
Descendants of enslaved people had asked the king to issue an official apology.
“It’s important in order to be able to digest the slave past,” Linda Nooitmeer, president of the National Institute for the Past and Legacy of Slavery (NiNsee), said in May in an interview with the public broadcaster. Dutch NOS.
A wealthy royal family
Since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, the Netherlands has engaged in an often difficult debate over its colonial past that made it one of the richest countries in the world.
According to a report commissioned by the Dutch Interior Ministry and published in June, between 1675 and 1770 the colonies brought in the royal family the equivalent of 545 million euros, at a time when slavery was widespread. .
The current king’s distant ancestors, William III, William IV and William V of Orange-Nassau were among the greatest beneficiaries of what is described in the report as a “deliberate, structural and long-lasting involvement” in slavery.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte issued the government’s official apology in December for the Dutch state’s role in 250 years of slavery, which he called a “crime against humanity”.
In his Christmas speech, the King of the Netherlands had welcomed these apologies, and declared that these were the “beginning of a long road”.
Slavery helped fund the Dutch ‘Golden Age’, a period of prosperity through maritime trade in the 16th and 17th centuries. The country trafficked around 600,000 Africans, mostly to South America and the Caribbean.
While the official abolition of slavery in the Dutch colonies dates back 160 years, its actual application is only 150 years old.