Dutch War Crimes
Sep 9th, 2008, in History, Opinion, by LairedionLairedion on the Dutch state being sued over war crimes at Rawagede, West Java.
Dutch State sued by Indonesians
On Monday 8 September 2008 10 Indonesian survivors of Dutch post WWII violence have sued the Dutch State for the assassination of their family members during the First Police Action (Agresi Militer Belanda I) after WW II. They want financial compensation, explanations and recognition for their suffering, as announced by their lawyer Mr. Gerrit Jan Pulles.
According to Pulles it is for the first time Indonesian victims of the fighting of 1945-1949 hold the Dutch State responsible. Mr. Pulles acts on behalf of ten villagers from Rawagede, West Java. They survived the bloody attack of the Dutch Army on 9 December 1947. According to the Dutch Honorary Debts Foundation, 431 (almost all the male) villagers were slaughtered. According to the Dutch Indulgence Note from 1969 150 people were killed. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced they will study the matter.
Well into 2008, 63 years after Indonesian independence, the Dutch, due to their stubbornness, ignorance and patronizing behaviour, are being haunted again by their crimes in the aftermath of Soekarno’s declaration of 17-8-45 and they rightfully should. Only just being liberated themselves from the Germans the Dutch wanted to continue the situation as it was before WWII and re-occupy their former territories now being declared independent and bearing the name Republik Indonesia.
Rawagede is one of the most notorious events in the history of Indonesian struggle for independence against the Dutch. On 9 December 1947 Dutch forces raided the West Javanese village to look for weapons and Indonesian freedom fighter Lukas Kustario who often spent time in Rawagede. They didn’t find any weapons neither did they find Lukas.
Survivors of Rawagede remember (full version of documentary linked in footnotes).
Apparently dissatisfied by their lack of success the Dutch commander directed all males to be separated from the rest in order to execute all of them, despite the fact there were some young males of 11-12 years old among them. Indonesian leaders reported the mass killing to local UN officials. The UN made an inquiry and concluded the killings were “deliberate” and “ruthless” but failed to prosecute and to have the Dutch punished and sentenced for these obvious crimes against humanity and this is still the situation today!
Last month Pulles (of mixed Indo-Dutch blood like yours truly) visited Rawagede together with people from the “Yayasan Komite Utang Kehormatan Belanda (KUKB)”, including its chairman Jeffry Pondaag, to collect witness accounts and endorsements from survivors in order to hold the Dutch State responsible.
A protest outside Dutch embassy in Jakarta.
While financial compensation is sought after it must be noted that most survivors only want the Dutch State to take moral responsibility and offer official apologies to the Indonesian people. Furthermore they do not seek punishments for the people directly involved in the killings. One survivor just wants the Dutch not to forget what has happened.
At the same time more and more Dutch veterans, haunted by the crimes and horror they experienced, are supportive of the Rawagede survivors’ claim. It is very disappointing to see that of all the Dutch political parties only the left-wing Socialist Party support the claim while the conservative-liberal VVD on behalf of MP spokesman Hans van Baalen even denied Dutch crimes against humanity in Indonesia! 63 years of ignorance and subtle racism have been persistent obviously, a disease many Western nations still suffer from.
It is because of this the KUKB has been founded by Netherlands-based Indonesian Jeffy Pondaag in 2005. They demand the Dutch government:
- to recognize 17 August 1945 as the day Indonesia became independent.
- to offer apologies to the Indonesian people for its colonialism, slavery, gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity.
The foundation is a non-subsidized independent foundation with branches in the Netherlands and Indonesia and would be happy to accept any donations. They look after the interests of civilian victims who suffered from violence and war crimes committed by Dutch military. Their website have more information on the Rawagede story and on the infamous Raymond Westerling who murdered thousands of innocent people in South Sulawesi.
Back in 2005 Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda, obviously speaking on behalf of the Indonesian people, made it clear Indonesia is not seeking apologies or compensation from the Dutch. This reaction came after then Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot (who is Jakarta-born) expressed regrets and morally accepted the de-facto independence of Indonesia on 17-8-45 while he was representing the Dutch government during the festivities of Independence Day on 17-8-2005. Bot’s remarks were widely criticized in the Dutch media for being insufficient and way too short of a full apology and recognition of 17-8-45.
Of course it is irrelevant if Indonesia is demanding apologies or compensation or not. It should come from the Dutch themselves but their stubbornness and ignorance are still hindering them anno 2008. The Netherlands have constantly refused to express a full apology and recognition but were always quick to raise their finger and lecture its former colony on alleged human rights violations during the Soeharto reign.
I’m fully supportive of the Rawagede villagers and any future similar cases, seeking for Dutch responsibility, recognition and financial compensation. Evidence is clear, witnesses and next of kin are still alive, we’re dealing with war crimes, gross violation of human rights and crimes against humanity and here lies an opportunity for the Dutch to finally deal with its own past by recognizing and helping those poor villagers.
Sources and links:
News article from Dutch daily “Parool” (Dutch) : Indonesiërs klagen Nederlandse staat aan
Website of KUKB (Dutch and Indonesian): Yayasan Komite Utang Kehormatan Belanda
1948 (English) Word document approx. 7.8 MB: Report of the Rawahgedeh observation team
Broadcast of Dutch news show Netwerk with topic on this story: Netwerk 8 September 2008 (witness accounts from survivors (Dutch-Indonesian-Sundanese). Streaming media, requires broadband internet access.
827 Comments on “Dutch War Crimes”
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belanda says:
Regarding to the article in the JakartaGlobe
A civilian court in the Netherlands had ruled that the Dutch state was responsible for the executions carried out by its colonial troops in Rawagede, Karawang, West Java, on Dec. 9, 1947.
This is not correct, this is correct:
The Dutch state is liable for the harm suffered by survivors of war crimes in the Javanese village Rawagede in 1947. The court in The Hague determined this on Wednesday.
…..
The Dutch state is not responsible for the massacre, this is what was said.
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Koen Zwanink says:
If we still controlled your country it would have looked a lot better.
You Southeastern Asians are nothing like the Han Chinese and the Japanese/Koreans, nothing alike.The things you did to the Chinese and the Maluku people (MENA MURIA!) how dare you judge us.
It is 60/70 years ago, move on!
Look at what you do to other people! you are even more discusting, we learn from our mistakes. You people are still as retarded as you were back then!Free Maluku!
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Just when you thought the story had a happy ending…
Rawagede riven by massacre compensation
The hassling by villagers started as soon as the court handed down its verdict, he said. Every time the phone rang, neighbors would flock to the house and pepper them with questions.
Was it news about the compensation, the would ask. How much was it? When would it arrive?
The tone quickly grew hostile.
Soon their house, too, was surrounded by a mob.
“We didn’t ‘agree’ to give away the money. We had to,” said Cawi, his sister.
“What else could we do?”
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timdog says:
Yep, should have seen that coming.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: for all I love Indonesia, and for all I love hanging out with Indonesians, this country’s attitude to money, the almost obscene sense of entitlement to some cash from somewhere for doing nothing, the idea that someone with more money than you should, well, just give you some, is often pretty repulsive.People talk about “benefits scroungers” in western countries, but they have their absolute equivalent in the +millions+ of people in Indonesia who live on the family and community support networks without ever doing a days work, or who live absurdly far beyond their personal means on those same networks.
That’s doubtless always been the case, but as the economy grows, and the great pressure to buy more aspirational crap increases, the ugly edge of the craving for cash only intensifies…
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ET says:
Somehow this reminds me of the anti-Chinese riots and what happened in Cikeusik a year or so ago. Different stakes, different scale, but the same dynamics. Indonesians and mob mentality, sometimes it’s difficult not to become racist in this country.
timdog, be careful because the worm is also eating on you. -
You could be right, ET. You watch – I’ll be blaming Islam before long…
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You could be right, ET. You watch – I’ll be blaming Islam before long
Don’t bother. Islam has nothing to with it, even I know that. Here in peaceful Hindu Bali go into the mountains away from the tourist traps and you’ll still find village wars, house burnings and other kinds of mob muggings, some of them adat related, others for whatever reason. I personally witnessed in some village a mob of po-faced retards in complete adat outfit, keris and blakas included, gathering before a house to ‘escort’ away a couple living there that was accused of kumpul kebo.
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Yaser Antone says:
The biggest joke in history is when dUtch were trying to reocupying indonesia after WW II, hahaha, why did they do that. Nederland is a small country with limited resources, even they could not defend their own country more than a week against german. Stupid Dutch..
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ET, I was only joking with that line. Actually, for certain reasons, I pay particularly close attention to the local media in Bali, although I’m not often actually there these days, and that alone gives a reasonable insight into the kind of thuggery that goes on out in the villages (your incident wasn’t reported though – and doubtless week in, week out, there are many similar untold stories there).
My favourite of the last year was when hundreds of blokes from Kintamani descended on Bangli with machetes and sharpened bamboo staves after hearing via SMS that some of their younger compatriots had been insulted by rival youths during a football match. Someone ended up dead, and dozens were injured.
Then there were the youths in Badung going at it with machetes over insults on facebook, and then just the other week there was intervillage violence in Gianyar after facebook insults following a village volleyball match…Still, I reckon we should be able to find a way to blame Islam somehow… 😉
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Yaser Antone
The biggest joke in history is when dUtch were trying to reocupying indonesia after WW II, hahaha, why did they do that.
Actually they would have succeeded were it not for American and international pressure to let go.
Nederland is a small country with limited resources, even they could not defend their own country more than a week against german. Stupid Dutch..
Well, they were able to keep you under their thumb for 3 centuries, weren’t they? 🙂
By the way, I’m not Dutch. Far from it.
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Arie Brand says:
“the almost obscene sense of entitlement to some cash from somewhere for doing nothing, the idea that someone with more money than you should, well, just give you some, is often pretty repulsive”
It might have a lot to do with the fact that traditional social structure was based on patronage –
the local grandee with his retainers. -
Arie,
That may have some significance, but I personally see it as more being the much-mythologised “gotong royong” concept gone rancid in the age of consumerism…
As dear old Clifford Geertz noted, gotong royong was not some kind of selfless “primitive socialism”, but a carefully calibrated network of debts, which were very much expected to be called in, whenever the next village wedding came around.
It relied, of course, on a stable, static, closed village-level community where no one was very rich, to remain balanced.
That has collapsed completely now, of course, but the idea that other people should “help” you in return for, well, nothing, has endured, and has now been extended to everyone, including passing strangers… -
timdog
Still, I reckon we should be able to find a way to blame Islam somehow…
In Bali? No chance. The pecalangs have it under control.
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But ET, am I not right in thinking that everything bad that happens in Bali is done by immigrant Muslims from Lombok and East Java? I’m sure that’s what I was told…
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Yes timdog, that’s the reason the pecalangs were given more authority.
But back to Rawagede. Dutch newspapers report that the Dutch government has reserved 1,2 million euro for the development of the village. Question is who will be responsible for handling the money when it arrives.
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ET :
Well, they were able to keep you under their thumb for 3 centuries, weren’t they? 🙂By the way, I’m not Dutch. Far from it.
So why The Nederlands Abandoned west papua in 1963??
Why would not they trying to taste the real thing of Indonesian Army? Nederlands is non of indonesia’s army level, if they did not run away from papua back then, indonesia would have destroyed them in two and half months. -
@ Yaser Antone
There is a Dutchman in this forum who was in West Papua at the time in an official position. He will probably be able to answer your question.
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Yasar,
Actually the Dutch left Papua due to International pressure and the UN at the time and the Indonesian Army did not even figure in anyone’s calculations then or now. Whilst of some size regionally, it is very poorly equiped and poorly led with little or no regard being paid to the logisitics or life cycle of the equipment purchased. Most nations aree well aware the Indonesian Armed forces are an internal population control mechanism only and in fact regarded as a joke when deployed on UN peace keeping missions as they required constant logistical and tactical assistance from the standing professionals.
Of course, its worth mentioning that the Indonesian Armed Forces in the last 60 years have been been responsible for the deaths of more Indonesians than the Dutch could manage in 300 years.
I understand that you may disagree with the above so look forward to the long list of international battle honours. Shall we start with the ill fated and laughable incursion into Malaysia or perhaps more recently the invasion of East Timor where virtually unarmed civilians held the mighty TNI at bay for over two weeks until borrowed air power turned the tide.
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Oigel :
I suggest you to read some good books on that matter. One of that kind of book I would recommend is ” Suharto : Ucapan dan Tindakan Saya “. in that book you can get some valuable information on that matter, especially on “Operasi Mandala “. That time indonesia was one of major military powers in asia, thanks to Sovyet equipment. Indonesia entering the conflict with huge weapon supply from Sovyet, such as Sub Marines, Planes ( TU ), and other warsaw block equipment. The real mandala operation was never started because of early Dutch abandonment ( Surender ). what indonesia had done so far is small operation to confuse the dutch about the real target of mandala operation itself. The real operasi Mandala would be a Huge offensive involving: sea, air and ground concerted attactk which the main target is Biak. Western powers realized that it impossible for the Dutch to overcome such offensive, especially concerning the sovyet equipment deployed by indonesian military. That operation would annihilate the last standing dutch in papua had they did not run away from that territory. You have to consider the world power balance back then.
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Yaser Antone,
We will never know how the Indonesian military would have performed because that large invasion never took place. If its preparation was as shoddy as was the case with that tentative naval incursion (with a commodore no less – see below) Indonesia could hardly take a successful outcome for granted. The Dutch military initially seriously prepared for that invasion. When I returned to the territory in September 1962, then as an UNTEA-officer, I saw, in Fak Fak, still quite a few abandoned military positions. What impelled Dutch politicos to give up was, externally, pressure by the United States and, internally, great reluctance among the population at large to start a fight about a territory as unknown to most of them as, say, Timbuktu. Such things count in a democracy.
You might be interested in a twelve part series about the whole issue I once wrote for an Australian blog. Here is the link http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1486
I will quote a for this discussion relevant bit from it and have nothing to add to that except that that Dutch ship was not a cruiser but a frigate.
In January 1961 a tentative Indonesian naval effort, an intrusion by three patrol boats, ended disastrously for the Indonesians. A Dutch cruiser, that had been alerted by a patrolling plane which gave the exact position of those boats, sank one, resulting in the death of Commodore Yosophat Soedarso, Deputy Chief of the Indonesian naval staff, and forced the other two to return. Two months later another Indonesian naval vessel was sunk. These were just preparatory skirmishes. Indonesia’s preparations for a large-scale invasion went on but, according to Ambassador Jones, “Sukarno’s ear, ever to the ground, informed him that despite the reluctance of officials in the Netherlands to appear to be giving in to him, the Dutch public would not support a war and therefore negotiations were possible” (op cit p198). Sukarno’s ear served him well on this occasion.
Where it apparently served him less well was in his apparent expectation about popular Papuan support for Indonesian paratroopers who, in the first half of 1962, were being dropped in small numbers above the territory. After 12 years of frenetically holding forth about the necessity to liberate the Papuan brothers from their colonial yoke the fact that, by and large, these brothers assisted the Dutch in rounding up their liberators must have come as an unpleasant surprise (when during the UNTEA period I came to talk to a few of these paratroopers they claimed that they hadn’t been told at the start of their flight that they were supposed to jump off above the jungle of Papua – the suggestion had been, they said, that this was just an ordinary training exercise – it was not a sinecure to be dropped on top of a dense canopy; as search patrols discovered during the UNTEA period some hadn’t been able to get out of the trees and came to a miserable end).
The Dutch duly lodged a protest with the Security Council about these armed incursions but Indonesia reacted to that with the statement that they deemed this protest to be unacceptable for “Indonesians who have entered and who in future will continue to enter West Irian, are Indonesian nationals who move into Indonesia’s own territory now dominated by the Dutch by force” (quoted in Higgins, op cit p100).
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That has collapsed completely now, of course, but the idea that other people should “help” you in return for, well, nothing, has endured, and has now been extended to everyone, including passing strangers
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Timdog,
Well as you (and Geertz) point out, gotong royong was all about reciprocity and hardly about getting something for nothing. In a patronage system , however, those at the bottom expect something for almost nothing, their “availability” and “loyalty”. The availability and loyalty of hangers on.
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Arie Brant,
Hahaha…
Want to know the real truth?????
” there was and will be no international pressures can affect a nato country to give up a single span of territory, the real pressure was ” Military Pressure “!!!!!!!!!!!.The Dutch can govern the world if canvas is still used as the main source of power to navigate ocean. It was the biggest shock in world military history if the Dutch willing to keep that territory with their military capabilities.
The certain ending would be ” UNEVITABLE AND IMMINENT CATHASTROPIC TOTAL ANNIHILATING SHAMEFULL DESTROYING DEFEAT” suffered by that old colonial power!!!!
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Well yes, if that conflict could have been won with big words Indonesian victory would have been a certainty.
I can’t see much here to react to. Oh yes, you could at least have spelled my name correctly.
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The certain ending would be ” UNEVITABLE AND IMMINENT CATHASTROPIC TOTAL ANNIHILATING SHAMEFULL DESTROYING DEFEAT” suffered by that old colonial power!!!!
EVEN IF WE HAD TO USE BLACK MAGIC!!!!
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. Oigal wrote:
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.Certainly I doubt you will see too much crowing by Indonesian Government about this decision (although nationalism may overwhelm smarts again) as the implication are not good for the murderous swine yet to be brought to heel.
The following fragment from an article in the Dutch quality paper NRC/Handelsblad, dated 17-10-2008, is relevant here:
In 1949, Indonesian and Dutch negotiators agreed to an amnesty for all crimes that were not ‘necessary for the political struggle’. The extremely vague wording helped the authorities from both sides cover up atrocities, which also meant that those responsible never came to trial. The Indonesian people paid a high price during the five years of guerrilla warfare. However, the Dutch were not the only ones with something to hide. Even more painfully, the Indonesians had committed acts of terror against their own people. The amnesty satisfied the authorities on both sides …
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I think we have all seen examples of the military in action ..East Timor, Malaysia spring to mind hardly awe inspiring..
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Though the operation Jayawijaya never took place there was, apart from the naval incidents I already talked about, some Indonesian military action in the first half of 1962 before the New York Agreement in August.
In the period from 15th January to 14th August 1800 soldiers were dropped or landed. The majority were paratroopers. When the affair was over somewhat less than 1,000 men could be counted as present. 159 had been killed. 479 were taken prisoner. The rest was missing (I owe these figures to a lecture by J.J.P. de Jong).
It turned on a hair or Jayawijaya would have taken place. Sukarno was not going to be cheated of the opportunity to humiliate the old colonizer. It was only after President Kennedy read Subandrio, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, “the riot act” (threatening that the US would come to its NATO partner’s assistance if Indonesia was not prepared to come to a diplomatic agreement – see my series for webdiary) that Jayawijaya was called off.
I will not speculate about its possible outcome. I can only say that I was not impressed by what I saw and heard of the Indonesian military during my time with UNTEA and later. I remember that, after the official end of hostilities, radios meant for paratroopers who had their camp in Sisir, East of Kaimana, were dropped off by an Indonesian plane above the Dutch military basis in Kaimana, which almost led to a clash between these paratroopers and the remaining Dutch (I have told this story in some detail in my webdiary contribution). Further more, Major Untung, the commander in Sisir, who later, as lieutenant colonel, would gain notoriety as one of the ‘ringleaders’ in the Gestapu coup of 1965, behaved on at least one occasion as an absolute idiot. He threatened a full scale attack on the Papuan police in Kaimana because one of his men had had an altercation with a Papuan police man who had pulled down an Indonesian flag (I have told this story in my webdiary series as well). If he had made good on his threat Pakistani UNO troops, also based in Kaimana, would have been obliged to intervene (whether they would actually have done so remains an open question).
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Arie Brand,
Have never thought of publishing your memoirs in print?
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Not really.
But I have given a somewhat more extensive account of my experiences under UNTEA in a chapter of P.Schoorl (ed.), Belanda di Irian Jaya: amtenar di masa penuh gejolak, a translation of an original Dutch work.
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