Descendants of enslaved people will have a lot of influence on the spending of the million-dollar fund to process and commemorate the slavery past. In the coming year, the cabinet will negotiate with interest groups in the Netherlands, Suriname and the Caribbean islands about how to spend the 200 million euros.
Minister Hanke Bruins Slot (Internal Affairs) and seven other cabinet members report this in a letter to the House of Representatives. The fund will consist of two parts of 100 million euros. One half is intended for measures to better inform people about the slavery past and its impact in the present.
Money is also available to process the past. This includes, for example, that descendants of enslaved people may change their surname for free from 2024, as the cabinet previously announced. In the coming months, the cabinet wants to talk to descendants and other parties involved about other measures.
The other half of the fund is intended for social initiatives. The idea behind this is that the government wants to give organizations plenty of room to decide for themselves how they commemorate the slavery past. To this end, the cabinet wants to hold talks in several rounds in the Netherlands, the Caribbean islands and Suriname. Gradually, the aim, the criteria and the organization of the subsidy scheme must become more concrete.
Hague logic
Above all, the cabinet wants to proceed very carefully and listen carefully to the wishes that exist. “This care takes time, which sometimes goes against the existing ‘The Hague logic’, but at the same time it is invariably regarded by many interlocutors as a necessary condition,” the cabinet members write. For example, they want to give groups of descendants that are not yet well organized time to do so. The plan is to complete the subsidy scheme by the spring of 2024 at the latest.
A commemoration committee to be set up especially for this purpose must ensure that the conversation about the slavery past gets going in the Netherlands. This should start in the summer of 2024.
On July 1, the commemoration period begins to remember that 150 years ago slavery came to an end under Dutch rule. King Willem-Alexander will give a speech in Amsterdam that day. Insiders expect that he will repeat the earlier apologies for Mark Rutte’s past.
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