Saturday’s Sinterklaas celebration in the Zeeland town of Yerzeke has been cancelled because the organisers, who continue to back the use blackface Piets in the parade, say they are concerned about public safety.

Protest movement Kick Out Zwarte Piet (KOPZ) had announced it would be in Yerseke to peacefully promote an ”inclusive Sinterklaas celebration,” local broadcaster Omroep Zeeland reported.

But the organisers decided to cancel the children’s party rather than banning the racial stereotype, saying they feared “a political and social confrontation”.  Last year demonstrators were pelted with fireworks and stones by dozens of locals. Four people were arrested at the time.

KOPZ is planning to close down next month, 15 years after it was founded.  The organisation was set up in 2010 with three main aims: more education and awareness of slavery; a national day to remember the abolition of slavery, and the end of the racist Zwarte Piet stereotype.

Jerry Afriyie, former chairman of the KOPZ, told Dutch News earlier this month its controversial protests had been necessary.

“I listen to people, and I have heard hundreds of stories,” he said. “And what all of these hundreds of people who talk to me on the street or in the train have in common is that they always hoped their great-grandchildren would not be subjected to Black Pete racism…and it is surreal for them now to experience an inclusive Sinterklaas.”

KOPZ was initially planning another demonstration on the Wadden island of Texel which also featured blackface Piets in last year’s parade. The Sinterklaas fesitivities will kick off on the island on Saturday when the Sint “arrives” by boat from Spain.

However, the island mayor Mark Pol said later that Sinterklaas’s helpers would be “sooty face Piets”, a reference to their job of coming down the chimney to deposit presents rather than a racial stereotype.

An exhibition currently on in Amsterdam tells the story of KOPZ’s 15 years of activism.