Speech by acting Kingdom Representative Jan Helmond at the Slavery Abolition Commemoration, Kralendijk, Tuesday 1 July 2025
For more than 200 years, this beautiful island has been “The White Hell” for a large group of people.
Fellow human beings like you and me - but without rights.
Traded and enslaved, because it made money.
For over 200 years, this unfathomable injustice remained in place, as a custom.
Generation after generation, they lived as the property of others.
Toiling in the salt pans every day.
Surviving in the scorching sun.
And endless walking on the long footpath along the blue sea, to Rincón and back.
Until they finally obtained real freedom in 1873, ten years after the official abolition of slavery.
The freedom to which all their ancestors had also been entitled for centuries.
That is now 152 years ago.
That may sound like a long time ago.
But those 152 years are still shorter than the well over 200 years of lack of freedom in “The White Hell”.
And so the memory of it still reverberates.
In stories and music.
In the landscape and in our heritage.
In human relationships and stubborn systems.
Even though our Bonaire has changed beyond recognition since 1873: it is still here and still continues to have impact.
Those memories combined form an important warning: to keep seeing each other as human beings.
And together they form an important mission: to build a society together in which everyone will always be equal and equally important.
Today, Bonaire prides itself on very different nicknames, like “Blue Destination” and “Divers’ Paradise”.
Nicknames in which we hear freedom, progress and prosperity.
But I also hear a deep yearning in it.
A yearning for a society in which old relationships of power and a lack of freedom have disappeared.
Not just in day-to-day life.
But also in our minds and in our hearts.
It is precisely because of this great yearning that we must face our colonial past together.
This is precisely why we must be able to say openly what still hurts us in this regard.
Telling each other the honest stories:
About the people who fell victim to colonial mercantilism.
About the obviousness of old power relations.
About the guilt and shame carried for over 200 years.
About the almost obvious power relations, which were passed on - noticed and unnoticed.
From generation to generation, even 152 years after the end of slavery.
Because all these stories shape who we are together.
On an island that is rapidly growing and changing.
For some people, Bonaire feels like the promised land.
For others, the feeling that their familiar island is disappearing or being taken away prevails.
Both feelings also tell us something about how we see the past.
And what past lives deep within us.
We must face both realities.
But in doing so, we must above all look each other in the eye.
Seeing each other as fellow human beings so that we can move forward together.
Because that is the essence of our dreamt and beloved Bonaire:
A close-knit community of free, equal and equally important people.
Who together put their backs into an island that thrives in every way.
Where everyone belongs, where everyone participates and is allowed to participate:
Wherever your cradle was or whatever language you speak.
Whatever story you carry with you.
Whatever the colour of your skin.
And whomever you love.
For however different the paths were, over which we came here together: in the end, we will have to find a path towards the future together.
No long, bitter walk in the scorching sun, like “The White Hell” used to be.
But let our shared path be a journey of hope, on the way to our dreamt “Blue Destination”.
Where powerful, confident voices sing along to the words of Bob Marley:
“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our mind.”
A text usually sung as a hopeful message to the victims of slavery and their descendants.
But it applies profoundly to all of us: whatever side of this history you are on.
Everyone has the task of breaking free from mental slavery.
So let us all free our minds every day.
Looking each other in the eye with an open mind - and listening to each other's stories.
So that we can continue building the Bonaire of our dreams together and in freedom.