The Dutch Government on Monday said it would tender official apology to its former colonies, thereby describing the obnoxious act as injustice.
This remark is coming about 150 years after the abolition of slavery trade in its former colonies.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte set to deliver a lecture on slavery at the National Archives in The Hague later today.
The cabinet representatives are also billed to speak in the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America as well as on the six Caribbean islands that still belong to the Dutch kingdom today.
The former world third largest colonial power was said to have captured an estimated 500,000 people as slaves for over two centuries.
Most of slaved were abducted from West Africa, sold and coerced to labour on the plantations in Suriname and the Antilles.
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The Dutch kingdom was one of the last countries in Europe to officially end slavery on July 1, 1863, but the actual end came only in 1873.
Prime Minister Rutte’s government had previously refused to bow to pressure from descendants of slaves and inhabitants of the colonies to issue official apology for the unjust act.
Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States played a huge role in making the government come to terms.
A commission in July charged the Netherlands to apologise and devise means to avert racism.
According to them “slavery is a crime against humanity and the state has to recognise for the historical injustice.”
