Dutch PM apologises for 250 years of slavery, after 150 years

The Hague: The Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte officially apologised before the international community on the country's involvement in 250 years of slavery and called it a "crime against humanity", Agence France Presse reported.-

The Dutch apology comes around 150 years after slavery was ended in the European nation's colonies overseas. These colonies included Suriname and islands such as Curacao and Aruba in the Caribbean and Indonesia in the East.

In his address at The Hague on Monday, Rutte said that he apologised for the past actions of the Dutch state. They are living now in the present and can only recognise and condemn the slavery in the past, he said.

In Suriname, descendants of Dutch slavery will be celebrating 150 years of liberation from slavery on July 1 next year. They mark the day through an annual celebration known as "Keti Koti", meaning "breaking the chains".

Rutte further reacted to the objections that arose from various groups and some of the affected countries, that the apology must be paid on the 150th anniversary and not Monday. But Rutte claimed that choosing the right moment was a complicated matter.

He said that there is not one right time for everyone, not one right word and the right place too for everyone.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch shipped around 600,000 Africans as part of the slave trade, mostly to South America and the Caribbean. The historic Dutch towns and museums were built on the back of brutal slavery. The Black Lives Matter movement in the United States had its ripples sent through the Netherlands, too, after many raised questions about racism in Dutch society.