Main issues of Dutch colonialism

Main issues of Dutch colonialism

The exchange of views on the issue of Dutch colonialism in
Indonesia has deteriorated a bit into the personal salvos of
sneering, while the main issues actually are:
1. The colonization of the Indonesian archipelago by the Dutch
East Indies (VOC) and later the government of the Netherlands,
under the crown of the House of Orange, was a deplorable inhuman
act and a negative page in the history of Holland (I am not a
Christian).
2. To categorize this as such can be done simply by the measure
stick of the Christian religion of the people and its leaders in
the Netherlands before and after Luther's Protestant movement,
and later on by the Charta of the United Nations.
3. The sins committed were: a) siphoning the wealth belonging to
the indigenous people through dwangarbeid (forced labor); b)
underpayments; c) killings; d) the banning and jailing of
nationalists like Bung Karno and Bung Hatta; e) belated and
discriminative education for "inlanders"; f) splitting society
into the category of vreemde oosterlingen (foreigners hailing
from Asia), which was the root of later pogroms against Chinese
Indonesians).
4. Thus what is not at stake is simply: a) an apology and
recognition of this evil period; b) compensation and payback in
monetary form for the wrongdoings, partly like the German scheme
now undertaken by Graf von Lambsdorf for forced labor, because in
this case the wealth acquired by the crown of the House of Orange
must be included in the package; c) the return of antique and
historical items in the musea, films, private household items and
so on in Holland or brought to Holland before 1945.

Y. SANTO

Jakarta