The Netherlands expects to set up a multimillion “slavery awareness fund” as part of its “history recognition campaign” to apologize for its historical involvement with the slave trade.
“The Dutch government plans to issue a formal apology next month for its historical involvement with the slave trade, the RTL news website reported on Thursday, citing sources.
According to the outlet, the government also intends to set up a €200 million ‘slavery awareness fund’ which will finance the relevant projects and dedicated school programs. Additional €27 million will be allocated to create a slavery museum, RTL’s sources said.
The government’s move will constitute a formal response to a report last year by the Dialogue Group on Slavery History. The commission, which was set up by the Interior Ministry, recommended that Prime Minister Mark Rutte should recognize and apologize for past slavery.
‘On the one hand, recognition will give satisfaction to those who suffered under slavery, and on the other hand, it will promote a critical view of Dutch history in a broader sense’, the group said at the time.
The formal apology, which is not expected until mid-December, will reportedly be supported by most MPs, while key parliamentary parties have already called on the government to take a stand.
In July, 2021, the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, officially apologized for ‘the active involvement’ of the city ‘in the commercial system of colonial slavery’.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Netherlands maintained colonies in the regions known today as Indonesia, South Africa, Curaçao and New Guinea. It was one of the last countries to abolish slavery, doing so in 1863 in its main colony of Surinam in South America. The year 2023 will mark 150 years since the Netherlands freed tens of thousands slaves there and on the Dutch Caribbean islands”. -RT
I think the Netherlands should apologize for slavery and colonization precisely as soon as Dutch Jews apologize for the transatlantic slave trade since Jews controlled a disproportionate percentage of the Caribbean trade in Dutch colonies.
Some people still point to the Christian continuation of a pre-Christian practice that Christians brought to a temporary end in the Christian-dominated world, while ignoring the fact that more people are in various forms of slavery today than were enslaved in the Christian West.
In actuality, no world religion took exception to the practice of slavery prior to White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christianity.
With that in mind, not only is it hard to believe that the slave trading colonial powers of yesteryear all got together to form a military alliance and now go about spreading freedom throughout the world, but it is downright foolish to pretend that slavery is not common today, or that humanity has somehow evolved past it.