CARIBBEAN-REPARATIONS-Sir Hilary calls for reparations negotiations with The Netherlands.

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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.

Sir 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 acknowledgment 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 historical crime.”

“The victim communities in the Caribbean and beyond are therefore not stakeholders to this historical statement. So, historic though it is, the statement can be challenged and must be challenged because 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 think that only multilateralism and full inclusion of all stakeholders 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. Still, they will be concerned that it emanates 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 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. Under Dutch state authority, human dignity has been trampled horribly for centuries. 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.

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