The head of the Netherlands government on Monday formally apologized for his country's centuries of allowing, encouraging and profiting from slavery.
He said this while speaking at the National Archives of the Netherlands, Politico reports.
"There are many pages in the book of our shared history that fill us in the 21st century with anxiety, horror and deep shame. For centuries the Netherlands state and its representatives have promoted, encouraged, maintained and profited from slavery," Rutte added, calling it "a crime against humanity".
Seven other Netherlands ministers and government officials traveled to Suriname and six former Caribbean island colonies, where they made a similar statement on behalf of the government on Monday.
Rutte's cabinet's plans for an apology were leaked last month and have been criticized by a number of civil society organisations. They said the apology was being prepared hastily and without consultation, and that the best date would be July 1, the 150th anniversary of the effective abolition of slavery in the Netherlands.
Six organizations even went to court to try to change the date, but lost on the grounds that the issue was political.
Rutte admitted that the preparations for the day could have been better. But he added that this should not be a reason "to do nothing".
"We need to step forward and have a difficult conversation about the past of slavery," he said.
Pressure on the Netherlands government to apologize has increased in recent months. In October, a parliamentary majority backed a proposal to apologize after a working group reported on a research trip to some former colonies.
In the past 18 months, the mayors of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, as well as the leadership of the Netherlands central bank, have apologized for their institutions' role in slavery and enrichment at its expense.
The official apology also includes funding for a slavery museum and outreach projects.
During the 250 years that the Netherlands financed an economic and cultural Golden Age, the Netherlands exploited more than 600,000 people from Africa and Asia - about 5 percent of the 12 million people enslaved by Europeans between the 17th and 19th centuries.
It will be recalled that the Belgian King Philip I for the first time officially expressed regret in connection with the Belgian colonization of the Congo and related abuses in June 2020.
