THE HAGUE - The Curaçao platform slavery and slavery heritage wants July 1 to become a National Day of Remembrance in the Netherlands, but that the current name Keti Koti-dag will disappear and be replaced by Day of Emancipation.
This is stated in a letter from the platform addressed to the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations Hanke Bruins Slot.
The commemoration day is one of the recommendations in the report Ketenen van het Verleden of the Advisory Board Dialogue Group on Slavery Past, but the name Keti Koti is mainly used among the descendants of the slavery past living in the Netherlands from Suriname.
On Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten, the day is officially called Emancipation Day and on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao Dia di Emansipashon. In Suriname itself, the celebration is called Day of Freedoms.
The platform wants a kingdom-wide name to be chosen and opts for Emancipation Day and Dia di Emansipashon.
In the Curaçao experience, the name Keti Koti, according to the platform, would be experienced as another sign of misjudgment of the effects of the Dutch slavery past.
Commemorative year
In the context of the commemorative year 2023, the platform also wants to consistently talk about 160 years of the formal abolition of Dutch transatlantic slavery and not 150 years.
This misunderstanding arose because as a result of effective lobbying by descendants of Surinamese descent, the narrative arose that the Dutch slavery period in Suriname only ended in 1873.
The reason for this is that the state supervision of the slaves released on July 1, 1863, prevailed for a period of 10 years. But neither Curaçao nor the five other countries and islands in the Caribbean have had this state supervision.
Until the eighties of the twentieth century, the system of ‘paga tera’ prevailed, a system whereby the freed slave could continue to live on the plantation with the obligation to work for the plantation owner for a number of days a year without payment. Or: … could continue to work in exchange for a house and a piece of land.
Sharing
The platform also draws the minister's attention to the fact that it is not appropriate to share the commemorative year 2023 with commemorations of other atrocities from Dutch history, such as the migration of Hindustani contract workers. The suffering of the black slaves bought or kidnapped, the reasoning is different from the suffering of the indentured servants, who had a great deal of freedom to choose the contract.
The platform asks the Dutch government, when communicating about the commemorative year 2023, to do so only in the context of the Dutch transatlantic slavery and slave trade.