The Dutch stance on Indonesia's independence

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam

Roeslan Abdulgani, an Indonesian freedom fighter who passed away last week, was both a player and astute observer of a key episode that was seen as most heroic by Indonesia, and most painful for the Dutch. His death coincided with a changing mood in the Netherlands about their perception of Indonesia's independence struggle -- of which the most recent example is H. Th. Bussemaker's new book, Bersiap! Opstand in het paradijs (Be prepared! Rebellion in paradise), 2005.

Of all wars, civil wars may be the worst. For the Indo's -- those of mixed Dutch-Indonesian blood -- the civil war of August 1945-1946 came as a great shock because it painfully destroyed their dream of a homeland. Treated as (pro) Dutch, they were victimized, turning this violent episode, called the "Bersiap period", into a most traumatic one. Half a century on, it has shaped a distinct community here.

Bersiap is Indonesian for "be ready"; but to the Indo's, it evokes a memory of a hell in a country that they considered home, yet a country that ultimately forced them to leave for another they regarded as foreign. Once in the Netherlands, they were neither welcomed nor honored as Netherlands' World War II victims.

Only last week, after six decades, the Dutch government offered a "mea culpa" (formal acknowledgement of error or fault). Too little, too late for loyal groups that have already integrated into Dutch society. So, they keep their collective memory and cultivate their own identity -- one which they celebrate annually with a Pasar Malam Besar (great night market or festival). Stripped of their original habitat, they have become "people without history".

It was to a crucial part of this history that both the late Roeslan Abdulgani and H. Th. Bussemaker were keen witnesses. Unlike then Dutch policymakers and many war-veterans, Bussenmaker, an ex-Dutch marine in Central Java, who never met Roeslan, considers him not a "terrorist" or "collaborator with Japan", but as a "freedom fighter" and an intellectual among the pemuda's (young revolutionaries).

In a Radio Netherlands documentary of 1997, Roeslan likened the pemuda revolution to "a huge serpent". Surabaya, where he was born into a pious Muslim family (1914) and educated at a Dutch high school, was a trading and industrial city-port with a small "feudal" layer and a large working class. A excellent narrator, Roeslan vividly described the spirit of the time.

Jakarta, where the revolutionary leaders and intellectuals resided, was "the head of the serpent", which could not fully control "its tail", i.e. the passionate responses of the awakened masses throughout Java that were ready to support and defend the country's independence.

"Imagine, Surabaya had been completely darkened (i.e. without electricity) for three and half years (until Aug. 23, 1945) and it was continuously bombarded by Japan and the Allied forces. And it was Ramadhan (Muslim holy month)."

So it was only natural that the people passionately welcomed the independence proclamation, "but," said Roeslan, "these pemudas, this tail of the serpent, often acted on their own." This eventually led to tensions with leaders in Jakarta as the Dutch returned along with the British forces, while some Japanese resisted the pemudas' control.

Despite pressures by their leaders, local pemuda's refused to cooperate with Allied forces. Incidents like one with the Allied mission led by Dutch officer Col. Huijer, which Roeslan narrated in detail and Bussemaker described in his book, ultimately led to the battle of Nov. 10, now celebrated as Indonesia's Heroes Day.

Bussemaker has done a great service by integrating the developments in various regions during this critical period. His book is the first study examining the complex interplay in Java and Sumatra of the four forces -- the British (who came to establish Allied control), the Dutch (who were eager to regain control), the Japanese (who sought to collaborate with the Indonesian leaders) and "about two million" young revolutionaries.

Like revolutionaries elsewhere, but thanks in particular to the Japanese military training (this was probably the origin of the term bersiap among the pemuda's -- not from the pathfinders, as Bussemaker suggests), the pemuda's were impatient. Bussemaker's metaphor was similar to Roeslan's "serpent": It was lever en masse (massive stand up); in the French revolution (1789-1791) also, "foreign threats incited mass mobilization of the youth."

Bussemaker praises the republican leaders in Jakarta, who succeeded in an orderly takeover of the Japanese administration, but criticizes The Hague's policymakers who forbid Dutch officials from being "in the same room with Sukarno, let alone talking to him." It's was this perception of Sukarno and Hatta as "Japanese collaborators", rather than as freedom fighters -- as Roeslan and, now, Bussemaker made clear -- that was completely mistaken.

Bussemaker's book signifies another shift in Dutch views on Indonesia's independence.

In 1995, then Dutch minister Jan Pronk proposed that the government officially recognize Aug. 17, 1945 as Indonesia's independence day, rather than of Dec. 27, 1949. Fearing war- veterans' anger, though, then PM Wim Kok resisted Pronk's idea. As a consequence, Queen Beatrice's wish to attend the 50th anniversary of Aug. 17 in Jakarta in 1995, could not materialize.

With most war-veterans apparently no longer resisting that idea, The Hague could now do just what Pronk proposed -- a mission that the Jakarta-born Dutch Foreign Minister Bernhard Bot might accomplish if he attends the 60th celebration of Indonesia's independence day. This could be a rare opportunity to remove what Roeslan Abdulgani once called the "Dutch wound."

The writer is a journalist with Radio Netherlands.