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.