Outrage after Amsterdam city councilor compares Artis animals to colonial human zoos

While defending her plan to turn Artis zoo into a city park, PvdD city councilor Anke Bakker compared the oppression of animals in Artis to what Black people endured in the colonial human zoos. The statement outraged the city council in general and visibly affected city councilor Carla Kabamba (Lijst Kabamba). “Comparing black bodies to animals is, at its best, very ignorant, and at its worst, dehumanizing,” she pointed out to the Amsterdam city council, AT5 reports.

The Amsterdam city council debated the future of Artis on Thursday, particularly the PvdD proposal to turn the zoo into a city park without captive animals. That message was buried by Bakker’s comparison to the human zoos in many European countries. “Until recently, we still had human zoos, where people from colonized areas such as Congo were exhibited. Until 1958 in Belgium. That was also called educational. I hope that today we will stop discriminating against other animal species in this way.”

Bakker’s statement led to widespread astonishment in the city council. Kabamba was the councilor to put words to the outrage. “The suffering of my ancestors and others from the Global South is incomparable to the well-cared-for animals in Artis, who are treated much better than people were ever treated in the human zoos,” she said. “Comparing black bodies to animals is, at its best, very ignorant, and at its worst, dehumanizing.”

Bakker later offered excuses, saying she didn’t mean to offend. “The comparison was about the feeling of superiority. White people about black people, and now humans about other animal species. That is a different comparison. I am concerned about the pattern of injustice that we have in society. If I have offended you, then I am sorry because that was never my message.” She also refused to remove the passage about human zoos from her proposal.

The city council will vote on the PvdD proposal in December, but it is already clear that there is little support for it. City councilors are concerned about keeping large wild animals in habitats much smaller than their natural ones, but for now, are willing to let experts make decisions about that.