Colonialism: A pimple?
Colonialism: A pimple?
The preoccupation with Dutch colonialism in the responses to
my analysis (East Timor: Dutch war replayed I & II, The Jakarta
Post, March 22 and March 23) suggests a curious predisposition to
avoid the issue of East Timor. This is apparent as they created a
debate on Dutch colonialism -- its achievements, cruelties and
injustice -- while my subject matter was quite different and
specific, i.e. about war crimes in East Timor and a comparison of
this to the Dutch war of 1945-1950 rather than the preceding
periods. Apparently, the fact that Indonesia had until very
recently been a colonial master of East Timor cannot be accepted
yet.
Most of the responses (March 25, March 28, March 29, March 30,
April 1 and April 5) are relatively irrelevant, some -- Chichi
Marti and Y. Santo -- even resorted to accusations ("neo Nazi",
"colonizing movie"), which tell us even less about the subject
matter than about the writers themselves. Others -- Bart van
Assen, Y. Santo and Chichi Marti -- were more interested in
whether Indonesians were more or less capable of atrocities than
the Dutch. This seems dubious since both -- i.e. their armies --
had proven to be capable of some barbaric acts. It would be
meaningful to search for historic conditions that made these acts
possible.
The fact that my critics hardly responded to what happened in
East Timor and, instead, rightly or wrongly, blamed Dutch
colonialism, is a symptom. It is a measure of New Order
propaganda on the "integration" of East Timor. Whenever it comes
to "East Timor" (read: our own colonialism), one tends to ignore
it, takes a mistaken patriotic stand, or blames others. In 1992
Soeharto said East Timor was just a small distortion, "a pimple
on our (Indonesia's) face" -- a "pimple", that is, that his
regime itself created, while ignoring his responsibility, i.e.
the humanitarian disasters, which many of his generals were
acutely aware of. One of his officials in the late 1970s had even
reported to Amnesty International that about 200,000 East
Timorese had been killed as a result of Indonesia's occupation. A
French sociologist (G. Defert, Timor Est, Le Genocide Oublie,
1992) put the figure at 350,000 deaths.
President Abdurrahman Wahid has justly proposed a mea culpa
for the killings from 1965 to 1966, but also for the East Timor
tragedy when he visited Dili recently. Perhaps, instead of making
irrelevant remarks and accusations, my critics should turn to
East Timor and answer the following for themselves: Does our
former colony deserve a mea culpa or a "pimple"?
ABOEPRIJADI SANTOSO
Amsterdam