Jakarta, IO – Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte has publicly apologized for 250 years of the Netherlands’ involvement in the slave trade, calling it a crime against humanity, reported Detik, Tuesday (20/12).
The apology was expressed 150 years after the end of slavery in the Dutch overseas colonies, which included Suriname, islands like Curacao and Aruba in the Caribbean and Indonesia.
“Today on behalf of the Dutch government, I apologize for the past actions of the Dutch state,” Rutte said in The Hague. The apology was offered in several languages.
“The Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering that has been done to those that were enslaved and their descendants,” he added.
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Rutte went on to say that he and the Dutch citizens who are alive today can only apologize and condemn the slavery that their country practiced hundreds of years ago.
“We, living in the here and now, can only recognize and condemn slavery in the clearest terms as a crime against humanity,” he stressed. (un)