State Secretary Aukje de Vries (Executions), Mayor Koen Schuiling and King’s Commissioner René Paas attended the first Groningen Ketikoti commemoration on Friday evening.
During the commemoration, which took place on the Ossenmarkt, the victims of transatlantic slavery were commemorated. Between 1621 and 1863, the Netherlands shipped hundreds of thousands of Africans to Suriname and the Caribbean and forced them to work on plantations, in factories or as house slaves. During the commemoration, as with the annual Remembrance Day on May 4, two minutes of silence were held at eight o’clock in the evening.
