Mayor Femke Halsema has apologized on behalf of the city council of Amsterdam for the role the capital played in the slavery past. She did this during the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the Oosterpark in Amsterdam.
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Domestic editors
Latest update:
15:09
“On behalf of the Municipal Executive, I apologize for the active involvement of the Amsterdam city council in the commercial system of colonial slavery and the worldwide trade in enslaved people,” Halsema said.
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loathe
In her speech, the mayor said that “not a single Amsterdammer living now is to blame for that past.” The city council is willing to take responsibility for this, because it is ‘in an unbroken line with the administration of its predecessors’, the mayor explained.
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“Also with those regents and mayors, whose actions we detest.” According to Halsema, it is time ‘to brick the great injustice of colonial slavery into the identity of our city. With a generous and unconditional acknowledgment’.
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First municipality
Amsterdam is the first municipality in our country to make a formal apology. Utrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam are also considering doing this. British cities such as London, Liverpool and Chicago and Charleston in the United States already preceded Amsterdam. Halsema’s apology was received with applause and cheers.
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Two years ago, the city council approved an initiative proposal that called for an apology on behalf of Amsterdam for the slavery past. This was followed by an investigation by the International Institute of Social History. The main conclusion was that the government of Amsterdam was directly, worldwide, on a large scale, multifaceted and long-term involved in the slave trade and slavery.
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Heritage
“This history has left a legacy in our city,” Halsema said in her speech. That legacy is ‘grand and visible’ in the historic canal belt and the wealth of art in the city. “Much less visible – and long ignored – in the exploitation then and the inequality of today,” said the mayor.
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Earlier in the afternoon, an advisory board handed over a report to outgoing Interior Minister Kajsa Ollongren. This states that the Netherlands must recognize slavery and the slave trade that the Dutch were guilty of until 1863 as crimes against humanity and must apologize for it.
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“These advice is important and cannot be misunderstood,” said Ollongren during the commemoration. “We can’t get around that.” She called it the need to ‘face our past’. At the same time, she emphasized the importance of combating racism and discrimination in our time. “There is still a long way to go.”
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According to the minister, we can only look at the slavery past ‘with horror, remorse and shame’. She concluded her speech with a plea to ‘stand not opposite, but side by side’.
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call for apologies
The call for apologies has been around for a long time. Outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte indicated last year that he did not feel for it. He said that this will not help the public debate now, but will rather lead to polarization. In 2013, the Dutch government expressed ‘deep regret and remorse’ about the Dutch slavery past. Also in 2001, the then cabinet expressed deep regret, but no apologies were made.
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‘The chance of claims after an apology for slavery past is virtually nil’
The chance that Amsterdam can be held financially liable after making apologies about the slavery past is ‘almost nil’. That is what Wouter Veraart, professor of legal philosophy at the Free University (VU) in Amsterdam, says. “That’s because the injustice happened a long time ago. You can no longer legally demonstrate that an individual is currently suffering concrete damage as a direct result of the past of his ancestors.” The professor knows that similar lawsuits elsewhere in the world have not been successful.
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According to Veraart, apologies are a formal way of acknowledging that injustice has occurred in the past. “That has much more status than an apology or showing remorse, which is primarily a way of showing empathy. You then show that you do feel the suffering, but you do not formally acknowledge it.”
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According to the professor, making apologies also indicates that from now on there is the intention to deal with one’s own history in a different way. “Something changes in the official self-image, so that you no longer trivialize the injustice from the colonial past and dwell on it more.”
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