BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies Professor Sir Hilary Beckles has commended the Dutch government for acknowledging the role it played in slavery but called for reparations negotiations between The Netherlands and the Caribbean.
CRC Chairman and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies Professor Sir Hilary BecklesSir Hilary said on Wednesday that the apology for The Netherlands’ role in abetting, preserving and profiting from the slave trade, issued by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Monday was significant and historic.
“With this formal apology of the Dutch state and the acknowledgement that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade enchained African bodies and chattel slavery in general, that they represent a crime against humanity and that such a crime must be repaired with specific remedies, this formal apology is significant and we understand it to be a historic moment,” he told a press conference, adding that The Netherlands is “best poised at this moment to bring global leadership to this long and sustained call for reparatory justice”.
However, the CRC chairman stressed that Prime Minister Rutte did not bring to the table all those who are the “survivors of this historic crime”.
“The victim communities in the Caribbean and beyond are therefore not stakeholders to this historic statement. So, historic though it is, the statement can be challenged and must be challenged on the basis that the Prime Minister did not seek the organized input and support of the Caribbean community and the reparatory justice movement in general,” he said.
“It is a statement that is unilateral in its conception and execution and we are of the opinion that it is only multilateralism and full inclusion of all stakeholders that will give us the impetus we need to move forward in a dignified way with this matter of an apology. The marginalization of the victim communities will undoubtedly be experiencing this moment with deep ambivalence, but they will be concerned that it seems to emanate from an imperial consciousness rather than a democratic sensibility.”
He said he was looking forward to meeting with Rutte and his team to “speak about the movement of the statement of apology into a development approach in which reparatory justice is at the center of the conversation”.
Director of the Centre for Reparations Research at The UWI Professor Verene Shepherd, meanwhile, urged other European nations to follow the lead of The Netherlands.
“I encourage all former colonial powers, to which the CARICOM Reparations [Commission] sent letters, to issue their own apologies instead of replies setting out their social and philanthropic actions in the Caribbean… and statements of deep sorrow, regret, and remorse that stop short of taking full responsibility for a crime against humanity and acting on the CARICOM 10-point plan for reparatory justice,” she said.
In his apology, Rutte acknowledged the horrendous suffering inflicted on generations of enslaved people.
“For centuries, the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled, encouraged, maintained and benefited from slavery. For centuries, people have been made commodities, exploited and abused in the name of the Dutch state. For centuries, under Dutch state authority, human dignity has been trampled in the most horrible way. And too few successive Dutch governments after 1863 have seen and recognized that the slavery past had and still has a negative impact. For this, I apologize on behalf of the Dutch government,” he said.
