As Suriname celebrates 50 years of independence, the spectre of Dutch colonial rule and its role in the slave trade still lingers.

The king and queen of the Netherlands touched down in the small South American country last week: the first visit by the Dutch royal family in 47 years. King Willem-Alexander had vowed before the trip that the topic of slavery, which was formally abolished in Suriname and other Dutch-held territories in 1863, would not be off-limits. “We will not shy away from history, nor from its painful elements, such as slavery,” he said. Building a common future “is only meaningful if we take into account the foundation on which we stand”, he added. “That foundation is our shared past.”

But the shared past remained a source of tension in the present, as the king and qu

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