Dutch PM Apologizes for Netherlands' Role in Slave Trade

On Monday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized on behalf of his government for the Netherlands’ role in slavery and the slave trade.

"Today I apologize," Rutte said in a 20-minute speech that was greeted with silence by the invited audience at the National Archives.

Before the speech, Waldo Koendjbiharie, a retiree born in Suriname but who lived for years in the Netherlands, said the apology was not enough.

"It's about money. Apologies are words and with these words, you can't buy anything," he said.

Rutte told reporters after the speech that the government does not make compensation "to people - the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of slaves".

Instead, it is creating a 200 million euro ($212 million) fund for initiatives to help address the legacy of slavery in the Netherlands and its former colonies and to promote education on the issue.

Rutte apologized for the actions of the Dutch state in the past: after her death to all slaves around the world who suffered from those actions, to their daughters and sons, and to all their descendants who are here and now.

Describing how over 600,000 African men, women, and children were shipped, mostly "like cattle" to the former colony of Suriname, by Dutch slavers, Rutte noted that the history is often "ugly, painful, even downright shameful."

Rutte went ahead with his apology even though some activist groups in the Netherlands and its former colonies had urged him to wait until July 1 next year, the anniversary of the abolition of slavery 160 years ago, and said they had not been adequately consulted in the process leading up to the speech.

Activists consider next year the 150th anniversary because many enslaved people were forced to continue working on plantations for a decade after its abolition.

The Dutch first became involved in the transatlantic slave trade in the late sixteenth century and became a major merchant in the mid-seventeenth century.

Eventually, the Dutch West India Company became the largest trans-Atlantic slave trader, said Karwan Fatah-Black, an expert in Dutch colonial history and an assistant professor at Leiden University.