827 Comments on “Dutch War Crimes”

1. Oigal says:

   May 16, 2012 at 1:28 pm

   Not so far it would appear. As I said, anytime you wish to add some verifiable facts to dispute any of the data presented I am more than pleased to accept it. I think Ari, Timdog and to a lessor degree myself have pretty much highlighted the difference between subjective opinion and fact. That said, no doubt you may be a veritable wealth of information and knowledge it is just so far you have kept it pretty well hidden via the Lord Jim persona.

   Indeed, perhaps it is just me. However, I find even when I disagree (often) with people like T’dog and Ari I invariably learn something new…On the other hand….

2. Riki Purnomoz says:

   May 16, 2012 at 2:18 pm

   The word “cowboy” is also used in a negative sense. Originally this derived from the behavior of some cowboys in the boomtowns of Kansas, at the end of the trail for long cattle drives, where cowboys developed a reputation for violence and wild behavior.

   “Cowboy” as an adjective for “reckless” developed in the 1920s. “Cowboy” is sometimes used today in a derogatory sense to describe someone who is reckless or ignores potential risks, irresponsible or who heedlessly handles a sensitive or dangerous task.

   In English-speaking regions outside North America, such as the British Isles and Australia, “cowboy” can refer to a tradesmen whose work is of shoddy and questionable value, e.g., “a cowboy plumber”. Similar usage is seen in the United States to describe someone in the skilled trades who operates without proper training or licenses.

3. Arie Brand says:

   May 16, 2012 at 4:34 pm

   Much as BB might rail against “political correctness” in other contexts, as far as Indonesia is concerned he sticks anxiously to locally approved political vocabulary. Thus it is self evident to him that the word “liberation” (pembebasan) can only be used if it refers to the imposition of Jakarta’s rule on some region in the archipelago. I bet school kids have told him that it is the right word to use in relation to the enslavement of the Papuans for instance.

   Thus a “liberation” from the Japanese in Kalimantan was impossible because did that not lead to the temporary return of the Dutch, a calamity that BB sees fit to compare with the imposition of Soviet rule on the Poles. Well you great historian you -I have news for you. You either know nothing about Dutch or about Soviet rule. It is of course also possible that you are equally ignorant about both.

   It is apparently a matter of indifference to you that the unfortunate victims of Jakarta’s “liberations” don’t share your vocabulary. Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak, the pre-1950 president of West Kalimantan, felt so little liberated by Jakarta that he conspired with Westerling, of all people, to overthrow the Jakarta mob. Oh he was a princeling and a Dutch puppet, was he?

   Well I have the idea that today his feelings might be shared all the way down the line.

   Dr.George Aditjondro wrote a few years ago:

   this iron-fist approach shows how little Jakarta has understood the extent of distrust and anger of the indigenous people of Kalimantan towards successive national governments in marginalising them on all fronts. Certainly, the massive opening of Kalimantan to foreign and national mining, forestry, and plantation companies, as well as the planned and spontaneous migrants from Java and other islands, have not benefitted the indigenous Dayak people, who have been systematically evicted and alienated from their customary land.
   …
   Suharto simply treated Central Kalimantan as Java’s economic colony. He replaced successive Dayak governors with Javanese ones, and awarded timber concessions in the province to his Javanese cronies who invested their wealth back in Java. In 1990, Jakarta banned all export of rattan products from the island, forcing all rattan producers to sell their raw material to Java, where Suharto’s crony, Bob Hasan, had set up a rattan furniture factory in Semarang, Central Java. This policy caused a great famine in Central Kalimantan, where more than 1.5 million hectares of rattan farms supplied 80 per cent of Indonesia’s rattan export.

   Arthur Koestler once referred to somebody who was condemned to lie continuously on behalf of the Soviet state as suffering from “tiredness of the synapses”. I wonder how one’s synapses will fare when one feels obliged to do a similar thing on behalf of Jakarta Inc.

4. berlian biru says:

   May 16, 2012 at 8:53 pm

   Another long boring screed from Arie quoting something not very interesting, that nobody bothers to read and adding nothing to the discussion, as per usual.

   The Aussies didn’t “liberate” Kalimantan.

   Simple.

5. berlian biru says:

   May 16, 2012 at 9:15 pm

   the Lord Jim persona

   You understand the term ‘projection’ in the psychology sense don’t you Oigal? You know where an adulterous husband accuses his wife of cheating on him or a habitual liar assumes everyone else is a cheat?

   Well this is the second time you’ve come up with this weird “Lord Jim” business and it got me wondering.

   You see far from having some desire to protect poor wee put-upon Indonesians from big bullying westerners, the merest cursory glance of my posts will show that on the contrary I believe Indonesia and the people of this country to be self-confident, forward looking optimists who are carving out a bright future for themselves and doing so without the assistance of blowhard white people.

   I count myself lucky to be allowed to live in their country and hopefully make a success of things as they build their future.

   Then it struck me, you’re projecting mate.

   You have chosen your favourite groups of plucky little brown-skinned people who you are determined to stand up for against the big bad villains; the Indonesians.

   The Dayaks, the Tim-Tims, the Papuans all call out for your succour and help, you will be their dauntless champion. Nothing is too much for these noble underdogs, no insult to bad to hurl at their nasty Indonesian oppressors.

   You’re a wee bit like Arie’s hero Westerling in that respect. He was a loser too.

   For make no mistake you’re on the wrong side of history and by your intense forehead-bulging, vein-popping vitriol against Indonesia I suspect you already know this. Indonesians don’t need bloviating bules anymore, the day of the forelock-tugging coolie saying “Ya Tuan Oigal bos” are over, you’re surplus to requirements in the new Indonesia and in the new Asia.

   They see through the likes of you now.

   Look at the responses you receive now, besides your buddies Arie and tim you are the constant butt of jokes on this site, no one takes you remotely seriously.

   You’re straight out of central casting for one of those slapstick comedy shows at night, the red-faced, angry bule, shouting at the natives and generally making himself look like a fool.

   It’s over Oigal, give it up mate, time has moved on, you need to adapt, Asia and Indonesia don’t need your type anymore, if they ever actually did.

6. Oigal says:

   May 16, 2012 at 9:57 pm

   Laugh. Damn this is getting funny! So you are an expert on Pop Psychology as well hey BB, it never ends in the bar of broken dreams does it. Good night Lord Jim ..oh and you really shouldn’t post after a few, brings out your nasty side, still I suppose is better that than kicking the dog after another get rich quick plan turn to dust (psss I can do you good deal on some Borneo gold shares..). I do like your tack, on verifiable facts, none available in the little book of the self evident

   Oh by the way, the offer stands. Do come along to next years service. I will ensure you get a stage front and centre to air your views to both the Indonesian and allied vets. Should be interesting to say the least.

7. Oigal says:

   May 16, 2012 at 10:18 pm

   And just to really annoy you BB, I will be here for years yet and I will continue to get paid outrageous amounts of money whilst others hyper ventilate in the back streets of Jakarta and chicken scratch for a living. And the best part all the while I am doing this providing careers and jobs for over 200 people. Not a bad life after all as it allows me all the time in the world to annoy self appointed experts on everything. 🙂

8. Arie Brand says:

   May 17, 2012 at 5:09 am

   It’s the usual thing with BB. No arguments or information to speak of. Only feeble attempts to shore up his self confidence by claiming that nobody reads the ‘screeds’ of one of his opponents and that the other is not taken seriously and the constant butt of jokes. Jokes, BB.? I haven’t noticed. Are you referring to the half literate contributions of such non “forelock-pulling” , “self confident” and “forward looking optimists” as Riki and Yaser? Poor sods.

   I really don’t know why we bother about you. You are chock full of cliches that even Indonesians who are a bit more intelligent and informed than your mates here (it wouldn’t take much) would hesitate to put in a tourist folder.

   What inner need drives you to proclaim continuously that the country you are making your money in is really quite all right, really. Should we see it as a sop to your conscience? Well don’t overburden your synapses mate. The victims of that syndrome Koestler was talking about also clung in vain to the phrase that they were “on the right side of history.”

9. berlian biru says:

   May 17, 2012 at 10:19 am

   What inner need drives you to proclaim continuously that the country you are making your money in is really quite all right, really.

   Again with this bizarre thesis that the default mode of westerners in Indonesia is to mock, deride and generally treat with contempt the nation which is hospitable enough to give them a home and a nice way of life.

   Why is this? Is it some form of desperate need to boost one’s own deficient self-worth to despise one’s hosts? Not sure, but it all seems like incredibly bad manners to me.

   So hard as it may be for you to comprehend Arie but the reason I am happy to stick up for this great nation and its people is very simple.

   I like the place. Weird isn’t it?

   And though it may stick in your imperialist craw here’s a fact; the decisions made in Jakarta in the coming years will be of far more importance globally than those made in the provincial backwater that you call home.

   I’m backing a winner my friend.

   Now if you’ll all excuse me I’ll be off for a few days with a massive workload and a sick child, I won’t have much time to check in, you and Oigal can scratch each other’s ego in the meantime, enjoy.

10. berlian biru says:

    May 17, 2012 at 10:27 am

    And just to really annoy you BB, I will be here for years yet and I will continue to get paid outrageous amounts of money … blah, blah, blah

    It has been an invariable rule that has never failed me in a quarter of a century in business that the man who feels the need to proclaim how much money he is making is a, now what’s the word I’m looking for again?, oh yes a blowhard.

    As I suspected all along.

    Seeya guys.

11. Oigal says:

    May 17, 2012 at 12:02 pm

    Bye…. Thanks for coming, it’s been fun 🙂

12. Oigal says:

    May 17, 2012 at 12:13 pm

    Oh sorry, as matter of interest the only thing mocked, derided and generally treated with contempt I noticed was yourself BB (although in my case not so much contempt as amusement). It’s a shame really as the title of this post naturally drew in people like Ari with his plethora of facts and figures, it would have been good and enlightening to see him taken on by someone equally armed from an Indonesian perspective. Unfortunately, it soon collapsed into the Lord Jim and Riki show long on abuse short on facts. Amusing but hardly enlightening.

13. Arie Brand says:

    May 17, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    S

    So hard as it may be for you to comprehend Arie but the reason I am happy to stick up for this great nation and its people is very simple.

    I like the place. Weird isn’t it?

    I haven’t noticed you sticking up for anybody at all, except for yourself and your comfortable way of life there.

    The reasons you like the place are quite simple: you are treated with more deference there than you are accustomed to at home, things are cheap, you can afford to have servants etc. Exactly the reasons why the pre-war colonials liked it.

    It’s just a basic lack of intellectual honesty that makes you transform the praise of your own comforts into a paean for that “great nation”, a”winner” that is on the “right side of history” bla bla bla.

    Meanwhile people who don’t have to fool themselves in this way come up with observations like these:

    http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/05/15/indonesia-rights-record-under-scrutiny-un

14. Arie Brand says:

    May 20, 2012 at 9:13 am

    In one of the instalments of his recent series on Indonesia Adriaan van Dis spoke with Goenawan Mohamad, the co-founder and erstwhile chief editor of Tempo.This journalist told Van Dis that his father was imprisoned at Upper Digul around 1927 and was later executed by the Dutch in 1946. Van Dis supposed that he would hate the Dutch. No, said Goenawan Mohamad, my father’s nationalism was tinged with Marxism (I think that actually he used the word ‘tainted’) so colonialism was not seen as a matter of ethnic groups but of classes.I have never been taught to hate the Dutch.

    I don’t think he just wanted to please his Dutch interviewer. Because he also told V.S.Naipaul, some ten years earlier (see “Among the Believers”) the same thing about not hating the Dutch. About the execution of his father he said then simply “It was war”.

    About his father’s view of colonialism: did he have a point? I have long wondered whether in the economic analysis of colonialism the ethnic factor has not been unduly stressed. What did colonialism economically mainly amount to? The exploitation of chief labour. But was capitalism ‘back home’ anything else in that period?

    And if one wants to drag in the ethnic factor couldn’t one argue that that played a quasi-role in England as well. What foreign visitors to Britain are sometimes struck by is the physical difference between the working class and the rest, particularly as far as height is concerned. Orwell says somewhere that it was held as an article of faith among the more genteel classes that the working class stank, not as a consequence of a lack of hygiene, but because, yes just because they were working class. In addition, of course, one had the vey noticeable differences in the pronunciation of English.I remember one American philosopher being so much struck by the physical differences between the classes in England during a study leave there that he came up with the hypothesis that the working class mainly descended from the pre-conquest population of England and the rest from the invaders.He even got an article published about it in Encounter.

    As far as Holland is concerned: I don’t know of any research comparing the situation of let us say the mid-nineteenth century Dutch and the Javanese proletariat. When I read about parents taking their sleeping urchins on their arm to factories to be placed there behind a weaving machine, for instance, and how these kids got physically disfigured at an early age because of their labours I wonder whether there really was such a vast difference.

    My first mentor on Indonesian affairs at the University of Amsterdam was the late Professor Willem Wertheim. Though he certainly was open to the Marxist point of view he didn’t speak about the colonial system as a class system but as a colour caste system. I still wonder how useful that concept is.

    On the rest of this tape Van Dis had an amusing conversation with a Dutch actor who was making an easy living in Indonesia by playing one of the Dutch baddies in Indonesian soaps. He apparently so convinced his audience that at one occasion one of the ladies present at a social do he attended refused to shake his hand.

    See for the conversation with Goenawan Mohamad
    http://programma.vpro.nl/vandisinindonesie/afleveringen/aflevering-6-verloren-taal.html

    at 22.14

15. Arie Brand says:

    May 20, 2012 at 9:52 am

    Corrections:

    “The exploitation of chief labour” should of course be “the exploitation of cheap labour”.

    Goenawan Mohamad spoke about his father’s nationalism as “tainted Marxism”.

16. madrotter says:

    May 20, 2012 at 3:28 pm

    Only saw the one where he meets up with Sukarno’s kids (‘cept for Mega), where he takes the train with Guru Sukarnolputra to visit Sukarno’s grave. Incredible how revered that guy still is, everywhere they go people want to shake his hand, take a photo with him, telling him how bad things are now and how Indonesia needs to go back to the real Pancasila….

    Gotta watch the other instalments asap!

17. Arie Brand says:

    May 22, 2012 at 2:14 pm

    I want to say a bit more about the implications of seeing the pre-war social-economic order in the Indies as a class structure rather than as a “colour caste” system, as a matter of the domination of one ethnic group by another.

    One of these implications is that there is no reason to regard the present system of exploitation as basically different from the pre-war one. It was a matter of the exploitation of cheap labour then, it is a matter of the exploitation of cheap labour now. I have said earlier that the coming of independence, of decolonisation, basically amounted to a “circulation of elites”.

    It is of course in the interest of the present elite to claim that something very basic has changed with the coming of independence. Well one thing has, and here is my bone of contention with the Lord Jim, Riki, Yaser club, part of the pre-war elite, its governmental-administrative part, showed a more genuine concern with popular welfare than is presently the case. I also want to maintain that there was then greater legal security and a greater respect for human rights (those who say Upper Digul are invited to compare it with Buru -and look at the picture of Upper Digul as given by one of Sjahrir’s biographers: the American Indonesianist Rudolf Mrazek). Also, the governmental-administrative elite and the entrepreneurial elite were then more clearly distinct and the former had to a certain extent a corrective function in relation to the latter (though, when it came to the crunch, the latter often prevailed). I don’t see such a clear distinction today, particularly with the entrepreneurial activities of the military, found, admittedly, in some regions more than in others.

    This is not a paean for the old colonial order. Its fundamental flaws were, politically, that it was incompatible with democracy and, economically, that in the last analysis the interests of the “metropolitan center” (or as one then had the hubris to say the “mother country”) prevailed. And it shared of course the flaw of the present order that, economically, it amounted to an exploitation of cheap labour.

    But it was not the scene of brutish oppression as it is nowadays often made out to have been. Nor was it the stage for continuous revolt. The simple truth seems to me that large sections of the Indonesian population saw for a long time this foreign government as legitimate, also because of the incorporation of a large segment of the indigenous aristocracy in it. As Wertheim once said, if it had been regarded as basically illegitimate it could not have maintained itself for a day there.

18. Oigal says:

    May 22, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    Well as I have said before it is difficult to see how for the average Dayak, Papuan or any other provincial or ethnic groups how things have changed really. Having your traditional lands stolen from you, exploited as cheap labour with the wealth shipped overseas even if it is only to the next island would indicate the more things change the more they stay the same.

    It remains a fact however the Indonesia can and should only exist as a greater federation of Islands yet greed and intolerance seems to strain those bonds daily.

19. Arie Brand says:

    May 22, 2012 at 6:09 pm

    Yes , what has happened particularly in Papua over the last fifty years has turned me against Indonesian anti-colonialist rhetoric for life. Holland had a very decent administration there in which I was privileged to serve. It was all the more decent for there was there for it, as a country, not a cent to be made. On the contrary – it was almost entirely run on an early form of developmental aid from Holland. Why this was so I have explained here:
    http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1363

    Neither was there any expectation of future gains. It was thought then that the best way for the country to go was small scale indigenous agriculture. After independence, which was planned for 1970, the country would still require hefty subsidies from Holland, so it was thought.

20. Riki Purnomoz says:

    May 23, 2012 at 3:03 am

    Don Quixote de la Mancha

21. Arie Brand says:

    May 23, 2012 at 6:44 am

    In comparison with the rapacious robber barons that now prevail there, yes.

22. Oigal says:

    May 23, 2012 at 3:47 pm

    I guess we would call this woman’s plight a bit like Don Quixote in the world of real politic. Of course, it doesn’t change the fact hundreds of theses creatures are stilling running free and in many cases we cannot avoid seeing their faces of evil on TV.

    To Ines Lemos, the celebrations in Dili today marking the 10th anniversary of East Timor’s independence mean little. ”I don’t think about anything other than my daughter and her killer being free.”

    Her daughter, Ana, had worked for the United Nations organising a referendum on independence for East Timor. On September 13, 1999, a pro-Indonesia militia commander known as Bola Guling came after the 34-year-old. Ana was repeatedly raped – once in front of her mother and children – and then paraded through her home town of Gleno, in the coffee-growing mountains two hours south of Dili. Her body was found days later.

    I guess in the world of Rikki’s and others she should just get over it.

    Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/striving-for-timor-20120518-1yvyy.html#ixzz1vgFeJWYw

23. Oigal says:

    May 23, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    Mind you for sheer shameless and unmitigated gall, this creature makes a fair fist of it.

    Kiki, Indonesia’s last military commander in East Timor, says Jose Bello conveyed that the new President had wanted to invite him to yesterday’s 10th Independence Day commemorations, “but in final consideration he could not because my name is still on the UN list”

    But he remains under indictment in East Timor, one of 391 people, mostly former Indonesian military officers and “pro-integrasi” militia leaders, accused by a UN Serious Crimes Unit over bloody events during the months preceding and the weeks following the momentous independence vote on August 30, 1999.

    These days Kiki is a successful businessman, president commissioner of Bank Artha Granta Internasional……In the meantime, Bank Artha Granta is scouting business opportunities in East Timor

    As I said utterly shameless..

24. Riki Purnomoz says:

    May 23, 2012 at 7:45 pm

    Don Quixote and his squire( aka Ari Brand and Oigal)

    Here is a good painting which represent your struggle to defeat shadows:
    ”Don Quixote, his horse
    Rocinante and his squire
    Sancho Panza after an
    unsuccessful attack on a
    windmill. By Gustave Doré”

25. Oigal says:

    May 23, 2012 at 8:21 pm

    Go to Tim Tim and tell it the Shadows there Riki..plenty awaiting..

26. Arie Brand says:

    May 24, 2012 at 5:52 am

    One can’t say that Riki and his ilk suffer from selective amnesia because that would imply that they haven chosen to forget what they once knew. The trouble is that they never wanted to know it.

27. Arie Brand says:

    May 25, 2012 at 7:24 am

    Oigal asked the question why Indonesia needs the 100 Leopard tanks it intends to buy from the Dutch.

    Yes why?

    Yohanes Sulaman provides the answer:

    Yohanes Sulaiman, a lecturer at the Indonesian Defence University, say there hasn’t been a true epiphany about reform. “It’s very difficult to change the mentality,” he says. “They think the threat is still inside. And by focusing on internal threats, they get more budget money.” He also reckons the army’s procurements, while less graft-ridden than in the past, are not necessarily good ones because there is no grand strategy regarding defence from an external threat. “They aren’t thinking about what they need,” Mr Sulaiman says. “They think, ‘Well, other countries have these shiny tanks. We should have them too.’”

    Yes those tanks look pretty good in parades, of course, and might give the Indonesian public the idea that they are getting some bang for their buck.

    It is not as if there is money to spare. The same article in The Economist (30th March 2012) in which I found this statement mentions that the 2012 defence budget for Indonesia totals 8 billion dollars (up from 2,6 billion in 2006). This seems a lot of money until one hears that neighbouring Singapore, with all of its 5 million inhabitants, spends 9,7 billion. And their money is probably spent more on equipment and less on men (now almost i million of them in the Indonesian armed forces).

    So back to these tanks. Shiny indeed (as long as they are kept up). So who else has to be impressed by these, apart from the public along parade routes? An implicit answer to that question has been provided by the military analyst Widjajanto who figured out that of the armed force’s 249 operations in the period 1945 – 2009 67 % were directed against internal threats. So never mind the ‘war of independence”, the ‘konfrontasi” with Malaysia,etc., two thirds of all that effort went into keeping so-called fellow Indonesians under the state’s (or rather the army’s) thumb. And these shiny things might come in handy for such purposes. We remember their capacity for intimidation from East Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw.

28. stevo says:

    May 25, 2012 at 9:32 am

    No surprised there Arie. It has long been my observation that military forces are as much about protecting those in power, from the general public, as they are about protecting the public from any external threat. We see examples of this all around the world on a daily basis. A similar thing can be said about Police forces. They are collectively a projection of those in power, with security of the authorities playing second place to the security of the citizens.

    Indonesian authorities probably fear internal uprising allot more than foreign invaders. Which is probably a reasonable fear to have.

29. bluemoejoe says:

    June 2, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    Yohanes Sulaman provides the answer:

    dude what’s he means is a mentality issue not the real threats ….. indonesia desperately need a modernization on it’s defense butwith all infrastructure hazard … it’s so litle money could be alllocated …. so tricks is go for the cheaps used stuffs

    Indonesian authorities probably fear internal uprising allot more than foreign invaders. Which is probably a reasonable fear to have.

    have you ever heard about the words of stability ??? dude , nobody can sale shits when riots trampled over economy …..

    in the last decade ….. never for once i heard TNI beats or shot the demonstrans…..

    except for some madura lunatic ….. trying to take the naval’s land property ….

    ” well , indeed it’s a suicide … while they protesting without noticing the police …. pointing their clurit to the armed naval guard….. what’s else could you expect 🙁

30. Oigal says:

    June 3, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    in the last decade ….. never for once i heard TNI beats or shot the demonstrans…..

    Sorry to hear about your hearing. Perhaps some visual aids then, try typing any search engine “TNI Abuse, Indonesia” should get your about 400 to 500 pages to read at your leisure.

    In the meantime, you can check out the brave and honourable here:

    indonesia desperately need a modernization on it’s defense butwith all infrastructure hazard … it’s so litle money could be alllocated …. so tricks is go for the cheaps used stuffs

    It’s not the fact they are buying second hand stuff, it’s the fact they are 40 tonne tanks, totally incompatible with Indonesian Terrain and have no hope of even deploying them from island to island let alone use them tactically. Still not like anyone expects anything approaching intelligence from this mob.

    Sadly, even a five year old child could point out Indonesia’s sea capability will be severely tested over the next ten years unfortunately the Army not the Navy or Airforce rules the roost in Indonesia/