In the annual Dutch Sinterklaas festival, St Nicholas arrives by steamboat in mid-November and spends a month in the country with dozens of the Petes, clown-like figures who leave cookies, chocolate and other treats for children. The affair ends in a night of gift-giving on December 5.
Protesters say the Petes servants who wear blackface makeup, red lipstick and frizzy "Afro" wigs - are blatant racist caricatures and should be banned.
The debate over the figure has gone on for years, but it is now electrifying nd polarising the Netherlands as never before.
"The world is watching, and the Netherlands has been found wanting," anti-Pete protester Quinsy Gario told a group of about 300 supporters in Amsterdam, most of whom were black.
Gario, a black artist who has emerged as the public face of the anti-Pete movement, has been subjected to unprintable insults and death threats for speaking out against the tradition. But at yesterday's protest he had trouble at times being heard over supporters chanting his name.
The debate exploded in national media this year after it emerged that UN cultural experts were examining whether the tradition is racist.
Verene Shepherd, head of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, said on Dutch TV she "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.
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