Dutch to apologise for slave atrocities

AMSTERDAM: One of the last countries to abolish colonial slavery will apologise for its role in the trade and set up a $297m fund next year to raise awareness about its legacy.

The fund will mark the 150th anniversary of Dutch abolition of slavery, decades after Britain had outlawed it.

Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister, had previously opposed a national apology, but during a visit to Surinam, a former Dutch colony, he announced that he had changed his mind.

“Those are huge topics: we need to talk about them,” Mr Rutte (pictured) said.

“Even though no one lives from that time any more, it is still an unfinished chapter.”

The big question is whether reparations will be paid. Wealth from colonies in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean fuelled the Dutch “golden age” in the 16th and 17th centuries. Amsterdam became the heart of the global economic system, with the first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India Company, and the first modern stock exchange.

On July 1, 1863, the Netherlands finally made colonial slavery illegal. Campaigners and historians say the changes took at least a decade to come into effect.

This autumn, the government is expected to begin a debate about the consequences of slavery before the official apology next year.

Last year, an advisory body to the government recommended that the Dutch state “acknowledges, apologises for and restores the history of slavery”.

The committee, set up by Mr Rutte’s government in 2020, suggested making July 1 “a national day of remembrance attended by the king and the government”.

In 2007, then British prime minister apologised for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, marking 200 years since the Slave Trade Act 1807, which prohibited people-trafficking from Africa.

It was superseded by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.