17 Feb, 2022
“Today, on behalf of the Dutch government, I present my deepest
excuses to the people of Indonesia for the systematic and extreme
violence from the Dutch side in those years,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte
told a press conference.
Rutte said he was also sorry for the
“subsequent blind eye by various previous Dutch governments.” “We also
apologise to all those living in the Netherlands who had to live with
the consequences of the colonial war in Indonesia, including those war
veterans who did behave appropriately,” he added.
It is not the
first apology by the Netherlands to Indonesia, as Dutch King
Willem-Alexander formally apologised during a visit to Indonesia in 2020
for “excessive violence” during the war. But it [is] the first
acknowledgement that there was effectively a deliberate campaign of
violence.
The study is the latest step in the Netherlands’ recent
attempts to grapple with its brutal colonial past, and wider efforts by
former imperial powers around the world. “The research shows that the
vast majority of those who bore responsibility on the Dutch side –
politicians, officers, civil servants, judges and others – had or could
have had knowledge of the systematic use of extreme violence,” the
researchers said.
“There was a collective willingness to condone,
justify and conceal it, and to let it go unpunished. All of this
happened with a view to the higher goal: that of winning the war,” they
said.
War crimes were first revealed by a former Dutch veteran in
1969, but ever since then the official viewpoint has been that while
“excesses” may have happened, Dutch forces on the whole behaved
correctly. The new research shatters that myth.The crimes “included mass
detentions, torture, burning of kampongs (homesteads), executions and
killing of civilians,” Frank van Vree, a war history professor at the
University of Amsterdam, said during an online presentation of the
research.
Indonesia declared independence in 1945 soon after
Japanese occupation in World War II. But the Dutch wanted to retain
their former colony, sending troops to quell the independence uprising,
finally withdrawing in 1949.
A Dutch court ruled in 2015 that The
Hague-based government must compensate the widows and children of
Indonesian fighters executed by colonial troops. The topic of Indonesian
independence is also being tackled in the Dutch public eye through film
and exhibitions – the latest of which opened at Amsterdam’s famous
Rijksmuseum last week.