Dutch back Black Pete clown tradition
Facebook campaign receives a million 'likes' in a day, but others believe festival figure is racist
A Facebook page seeking to preserve the "Black Pete" clowns in blackface who accompany St Nicholas to the Netherlands has become the fastest-growing Dutch-language page, receiving a million "likes" in a single day.
The popularity of the "Pete-ition" page reflects the depth of emotional attachment most Dutch people - 90 per cent of whom have European ancestry - feel to a figure that helped launch the tradition of Santa Claus. But it also reflects their anger at critics who call it racist.
Those critics include foreigners who they feel don't understand the tradition. They also include many of the country's most prominent blacks.
"Don't let the Netherlands' most beautiful tradition disappear," the page says.
On Tuesday, the chairwoman of a UN Human Rights Commission panel looking into the festival condemned it flatly.
"The working group does not understand why it is that people in the Netherlands cannot see that this is a throwback to slavery, and that in the 21st century this practice should stop," Verene Shepherd told television program EenVandaag.