The Advisory Board Dialogue Group on Slavery Past has not functioned properly for months and some members were biased. Work that was planned for a year was finally done in two months. This is evident from documents submitted by NRC have been requested on the basis of the Government Information (Public Access) Act.
The advisory board was established in July 2020 by outgoing minister Kajsa Ollongren (Internal Affairs, D66) to investigate the impact of the slavery past in contemporary society. At the request of the Senate, it also had to be considered whether slavery and the slave trade that took place in the past should be regarded as a crime against humanity by law.
The advisory board had to organize a social dialogue about this and obtain scientific advice, whereby the board members had to adopt an ‘open’ attitude. However, in internal emails from officials at the ministry it can be read that „some members leave a clear mark on the group . [lijken] and want to pre-sort on the results of the dialogue”.
The advisory board presented its final report on July 1 this year – two months later than planned – on Keti Koti, the annual holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery. The report contains a number of recommendations, including that slavery should indeed be classified as a crime against humanity in a law. The Commission adds on its own initiative that apologies from the State of the Netherlands must also be regulated in a law.
Internal documents from the Ministry of the Interior make it clear that the work behind this advice has been rushed and messy. This was partly due to the restrictions imposed by the corona pandemic on the (physical) organization of dialogue meetings, but also due to the actions of the advisory board itself.
kibble activities
A memo about the functioning of the college that officials will prepare for Minister Ollongren on December 30, 2020, states that “little has happened yet while expectations are high”. For example, more than six months after the institution of the college, not a single discussion table has yet been planned. “The lack of progress is partly related to the constant recurrence of decisions, lack of clarity about decisions made, formalistic working methods, wanting to anticipate the results of the discussion tables while it must be an open dialogue.”
The members of the advisory board are lawyer and former state councilor Lilian Gonsalves-Ho Kang You, director of the Zeeuws Archief Hannie Kool-Blokland, ex-football player Edgar Davids, Glenn de Randamie (rapper Typhoon), chairman of the Papiamento language foundation Splika Ruben Severina and Frits Goedgedrag, the first governor of Curaçao. The latter will resign from his duties as president of the Executive Board in January 2021, because the corona pandemic makes it impossible for him to come to the Netherlands from Curaçao often enough. He will be succeeded by Dagmar Oudshoorn, director of Amnesty International Netherlands and before that mayor of Uithoorn, among others.
That change does not immediately lead to an improvement, officials concluded at the end of March. Some ‘chunks of activities have been done’, but the dialogue group does not seem to see enough ‘that knots have to be made’. It seems that there are concerns within the advisory board that too little attention will be paid to the communities of descendants of enslaved people, the officials write. “Some members of the dialogue group are afraid that the ‘black’ perspective will not be adequately reflected in the dialogue through discussion tables in social sectors. This is probably also the reason why little progress has been made so far.”
Also read: Advice: Recognize slavery in law as a crime against humanity and apologize
The work of the scientists who have been asked for historical and legal advice is also not going smoothly. There is little insight into what they are doing, the officials conclude. Some have not even returned their order confirmation. The scientists had been promised that they could do their work “independently and without form”, but that may have been “a bit too optimistic,” said an official. „[B]Ice management or supplementation in this approach (is) desirable”.
The different scientists are unable to arrive at a joint advice. That would be a shame, according to the officials. “As a result, fragmented individual advice/products are delivered. As a result, the advisory board lacks the opportunity to present powerful, unambiguous scientific advice. The end product should be more than the sum of its parts.”
Substantive interference
But it doesn’t look like that. It was intended that three groups of three scientists would advise on three sub-topics, but the result of their work will eventually precipitate into seven separate pieces. “Also, there is now doubt in the dialogue group whether these are the right scientists,” writes an official, “although the dialogue group has decided this itself.” Ultimately, the Asser Institute (Centre for International & European Law) will be commissioned in April to write an overarching advice. This mainly focuses on a comparison with legal practice in France and Poland.
Also read: Slave trade was not only a matter for Amsterdam
The original schedule envisaged a series of dialogues from September 2020 to March 2021. Ultimately, all dialogues will be held in May. The Advisory Board will write its report in June, after which it will be presented to Minister Ollongren on 1 July. During her speech at the Keti Koti Monument in Amsterdam, she praised the work of the college: “These advice is important and cannot be misunderstood. We can’t get around that. They match the urgency I feel.”
Since then, however, a government response has been delayed, also because the parties in the current caretaker government do not share the same views about dealing with the Dutch slavery past. Officials did write to each other on June 24 that they find it remarkable that the Advisory Board recommends that recognition, apologies and restoration of the slavery past be legally anchored. That has never happened in any other country. When a civil servant indicates that he wants to ask committee chairman Oudshoorn a question about this, a colleague replies that he should not do that: “Can all too easily be interpreted as substantive interference.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 1, 2021
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