The Right to Remember

Whose Right to Remember?

Bio. Wim Manuhutu is a historian and heritage professional specialising in the history of Indonesia and a lecturer in political history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Manuhutu began by turning the seminar title into a question: whose right to remember is being discussed? He examined the familiar account that places the beginning of Moluccan presence in the Netherlands in 1951, when the first ship carrying Moluccan families arrived.

While 1951 is central to public memory, he argued that the dominant story is incomplete. Moluccan connections with the Netherlands reach back to the seventeenth century, and the usual Dutch–Moluccan binary can flatten a diverse community into a single category. His contribution called for closer attention to terminology, complexity and the power involved in writing history.

“Never Again”: An Empty Promise?

Bio. Umayya Abu-Hanna is a Palestinian author and CIE project coordinator whose work connects memory, identity, cultural practice and public dialogue.

Abu-Hanna reflected on the alternative commemoration held outside the Anne Frank House on 3 May 2024. Organised as a wake for Holocaust and Palestinian victims, it sought to create a space where different histories of suffering could be remembered together.

Her contribution asked what happens when people do not recognise themselves in a national commemoration or feel unable to express solidarity within it. She described the alternative gathering as a practice of love and intersectional solidarity, and argued that the right to remember is inseparable from the right to retain and express one’s identity.

Public Apologies as Memory Work?

Bio. Gerlov van Engelenhoven is an assistant professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, specialising in postcolonial memory and heritage.

Van Engelenhoven approached public apology through the history of the Moluccan community in the Netherlands. Rather than prescribing an answer, he opened a series of questions: what should an apology address, who should offer it, why should it happen now and what purpose should it serve?

Leaving these questions open invited the audience to examine the power dynamics of apology. The discussion focused particularly on who benefits—the people receiving an apology or the institution making it—and whether an apology without material or political consequences can constitute meaningful memory work.

Rehabilitation: Symbolic or Effective?

Bio. Jerry Gumbs is a policymaker at the Ministry of Climate Policy and Green Growth and a rapper known as Juny Martina, addressing social and historical issues including colonialism.

Gumbs discussed the rehabilitation of Curaçaoan figures Tula and Medardo de Marchena. His central question was whether rehabilitation can become meaningful while colonial structures continue to shape contemporary politics and public life.

A colour-vision exercise made the point tangible. After pretending not to see the numbers visible to the audience, he apologised for dismissing their perspective. The experiment presented rehabilitation as a change in how the world is seen: without recognising the structures that made injustice possible, it risks remaining a symbolic gesture.