Indies-Dutch suffered most

Indies-Dutch suffered most

By Onghokham

JAKARTA (JP): A big row is at present going on in Holland over the planned royal visit to Indonesia, on Aug. 20, of Queen Beatrix and her consort, Prince Claus. Although that is three days after the day of the 50th anniversary of the "Indonesian rebellion", as Dutch die-hards would term it, it is still much too close to "that date".

This row is, of course, entirely a Dutch matter which has its roots in the dynamics of Dutch society. Independent Indonesia has nothing to do with it and I hope we will not interfere in Dutch domestic politics. Therefore, I almost had a fit when our foreign minister, Ali Alatas, commented favorably on the remarks of Dutch minister Jan Pronk that "it is time for the Dutch to recognize the Indonesian people's right to self-determination".

It was, I think, Voltaire who said, that if ever the world should come to an end he would go to Holland because things there always happen 50 years later. I would say, rather, come to Indonesia because here things never happen, not even when the world comes to an end, because here we have our own system of existence.

Still, Ali Alatas's statement, I thought, could have threatened the composition of the Dutch cabinet and caused a political crisis in the Netherlands. Still, there was no protest against our foreign minister's statement, which I think bordered on an infringement of Dutch sovereignty.

Notwithstanding all these considerations I venture to give some comments on the Dutch political dynamics in this context and its implications on attitudes in Dutch society, regarding Indonesia. After all, I speak Dutch and I was a subject of the Netherlands -- not under the present queen, but under her grandmother, the late Queen Wilhelmina, the longest-living monarch of the Netherlands and its "realms beyond the seas". She was, in my youth, the embodiment of the Indonesian conception of Ibu Pertiwi and of the nationalist feminist, Kartini.

Wilhelmina raised the House of Orange to its highest levels of popularity. She was the ray of hope for eventual liberation from the Germans, through her exile to London during World War II, when her Dutch subjects in the Netherlands were under harsh German occupation and her Dutch subjects in the Southeast Asian colonies were in Japanese prison camps.

For many people of that generation, who at that time lived in what was then the Netherlands Indies, she was all that was Dutch, Indo-Dutch, or Eurasians of mixed blood. Many others were born in Holland but were blijvers (settlers). And all suffered during the Japanese occupation.

Then there are the veterans of the Indonesian-Dutch military conflict of 1945-1950 and former soldiers of the late Royal Netherlands Indies Army (KNIL), including the Ambonese who were demobilized in the Netherlands.

It is interesting to note that after 80 years of war, to free the country from Spanish rule (1568-1648) and some four centuries thereafter, the Dutch national anthem vindicates Holland's own "rebellion" with the sentence "...the King of Spain I have always honored", reflecting Dutch attitudes towards rebellions and revolutions, especially those directed against themselves, in our present case.

In the case of Indonesia's independence the main losers were the Indies-Dutch and the settlers, both pure Dutch and Eurasian, but especially those of mixed blood, who have settled in this country for many generations and have never seen Holland, which was a foreign country. When, in 1957, Indonesia ordered all Dutch citizens out of this country, those people lost a homeland as well as their properties and their careers.

On this 50th anniversary of Indonesia's independence, it is also necessary to reflect a moment on the fact that the Revolution also caused a lot of human suffering, that there were victims as well as victors. Indeed, historians might some day remark that the post-World War II collapse of colonial empires caused many losses in human lives and fortunes -- perhaps as much as the building of those empires, on the Indian sub-continent, in Africa and elsewhere.

The losses and sufferings which the Indies-Dutch had suffered and gone through were felt with even more pain since, in the Netherlands, they were ignored. Everybody was preoccupied with the horrors and heroism of the Nazi occupation years. The Dutch and the history of their East Indian colonies during the Japanese occupation and the Indonesian revolution, were forgotten, or, at best, a mere sideline of Dutch history, as the colonies always had been. The Indies-Dutch felt somewhat like the American soldiers of the Pacific War, but worse.

The experience of F.G.P. Jacquet, a colonial official, was a typical case in point. He and his family were put in separate concentration camps during the Japanese occupation of the Indies. For almost four years he was also under the constant threat of death because he had been a member of the Netherlands Indies Office of Far Eastern Affairs (counter espionage) and spoke fluent Japanese. Fortunately, the Japanese never found out about it.

Back in the Netherlands, Jacquet, as he wrote in his memoirs, asked the government for back-payment of the salary he had not received during his years in the occupied Indies. The answer was: We really owe you nothing because, after all, the Japanese fed you and also gave you free accommodation. One can understand his anger and the anger of the Indies-Dutch in general over this attitude.

Only decades later, in the early 1970s when the late Showa emperor of Japan came to visit the Netherlands and a fury was raised about it, did the government recognize its debt to the Indies-Dutch. It finally gave some belated compensation to the Indies families, amounting to F.75 (Rp 100,000). The Indies-Dutch were not pacified and still seem angry even now, and with some reason too, especially because this year will also see the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Europe from Nazi rule.

Again, the Indies-Dutch seem to be forgotten. Seen in this light, a queen's visit on Aug. 17, would indeed seem like denying the existence of the Indies-Dutch as citizens of the Netherlands.

Dutch cabinet minister Jan Pronk has called on Queen Beatrix to visit Indonesia on Aug. 17 and finally recognize "the Indonesian people's right to self-determination". Jan Pronk himself, though, has often censured Indonesia's international and national behavior. As far as the Indonesian government is concerned, he is no friend. However, now, in this Dutch controversy, the government has expressed some approval of his stance, as mentioned above.

But Jan Pronk's opinions, of course, date from an era which differs from that of those Dutch people who are angry at the Republic of Indonesia. Jan Pronk's policies and attitudes date from the Vietnam War era and not that of the Indonesian-Dutch War of 1945-50. Jan Pronk also called on Queen Beatrix to apologize for Dutch war atrocities committed during 1945-1950, which has angered Dutch veterans and other Dutch citizens.

I suggest that if any apologies are made, that Queen Beatrix apologize for Holland having failed to defend the Indies and for surrendering it so easily to the Japanese aggressors. That would be current, it would hurt no one and it would pacify the Indies- Dutch, including even her grandmother's subjects, who also experienced the Japanese occupation and were never mentioned or remembered.

The writer is a noted historian who formerly taught at the University of Indonesia.