Dutch King Willem-Alexander yesterday issued a historic royal apology for the Netherlands’ involvement in slavery, stressing that he felt ‘personally and intensely’ affected.
Africa Today News, New York reports that thousands of descendants of slaves from the South American nation of Suriname and the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao attended the celebrations in Amsterdam for ‘Keti Koti’ (‘breaking the chains’ in Surinamese) to commemorate 150 years since the practice was abolished.
‘Today I’m standing here in front of you as your king and as part of the government. Today I am apologising personally,’ Willem-Alexander said to loud cheers from the crowd.
The monarch told those attending the event, held under a light drizzle in the capital’s Oosterpark gardens that; ‘I am intensely experiencing this with my heart and soul’.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte already officially apologised in December on behalf of the government.
It was not certain whether the monarch would follow suit on behalf of the royals for a trade that researchers say brought vast riches to his ancestors in the House of Orange.
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‘Slave trading and slavery is recognised as a crime against humanity,’ the king said.
‘The monarchs and rulers of the House of Orange took no steps against it.’
‘Today, I am asking for forgiveness for the crystal-clear lack of action, on this day when we are commemorating slavery in the Netherlands,’ Willem-Alexander said in his speech, broadcast live on television.
Ahead of the ceremony descendants of slaves have called for the king to use the occasion to apologise.
‘That is important, especially because the Afro-Dutch community considers it important,’ Linda Nooitmeer, chairman of the National Institute of Dutch Slavery History and Legacy, told public broadcaster NOS.
‘It is important for processing the history of slavery.’
Since the Black Lives Matter movement emerged in the United States, the Netherlands has embarked on an often difficult debate about the colonial and slave trading past that turned it into one of the world’s richest countries.
And the Dutch royals have often found themselves at the centre of the debate.
A Dutch study released in June found that the royal family earned 545 million euros ($595 million) in today’s terms between 1675 and 1770 from the colonies, where slavery was widespread.
The current king’s distant ancestors, Willem III, Willem IV, and Willem V, were among the biggest earners from what the report called the Dutch state’s’ deliberate, structural and long-term involvement’ in slavery.
Separately, in 2022 King Willem-Alexander announced that he was ditching the royal Golden Coach that traditionally transported him on state occasions because it had images of slavery on the sides.