To Mr. Willem Oltmans

To Mr. Willem Oltmans

The Jakarta Post on March 27, 2000 published your letter
titled Soeharto's crime.

Your wish cannot come true due to the role played by your
country as a member of the dubious consortium called IGGI-CGI,
and similarly in the United Nations.

In fact, your country planted the seeds of destruction long
ago through the Netherlands East Indies (VOC) and the Nederlands
Oost-Indische Regering (Netherlands East Indies Government). The
way you let go of this colony is in dark contrast to how Great
Britain did with our neighbor Malaysia. You did not prepare this
colony for the post-colonial period, and we had to fight a bloody
war with your government before we got the de facto independence.

And it is exactly these initial elements of our Armed Forces
fighting your armed forces between 1945 and 1950, who claimed
later their "seats" in the steering of our country's fate
formulated by the "dual function" slogan, where they played a
pivotal role in the downfall of Sukarno, and then became the
praetorian guard of Soeharto.

My point is that you, as a de facto "shareholder" via the
consortium above, nurtured the tenure of Soeharto all those long
32 years.

And now you call him names, etc. What an irony and shameful
act for a country full of (pseudo) Christians, who has siphoned
off our riches since the first landing of Dutch sailing ships 400
years ago.

If you are a man of principles, and you have fellow countrymen
who also adhere to principles, then you should make a movement in
Holland to get Mr. Soeharto transported to The Hague for an
international trial. At least you could mount an effective
campaign, mobilize the positive forces, and:
1. Write up all the major economical crimes of Soeharto and his
cronies.
2. Get the bankers in Holland to cooperate and publish the
streams of transactions and transfers done via ABN-AMRO, Pierson-
Heldring, etc.
3. And name all those crimes plus the atrocities done under his
regime by which commanders, under which governors, ministers.

Use all kinds of groups (religious, NGOs, Red Cross,
accountants, political parties) to get hold of data and facts and
prepare the j'accuse document made by your lawyers where Soeharto
& Co. can be brought to court, both here (because many laws here
are similar to those in Holland and jurisprudence can be used)
and in The Hague.

In doing so, you can then help our President and his
administration to move fast and focused, instead of lamenting and
wishing.

This country is totally ruined, not in terms of cities and
buildings except for those few burned down, but in terms of its
human assets, which have been reduced to near zombies during
those 32 long years via the educational policy, the media
handling in a Goebbels way and your country "looking-on" and
giving IGGI loans.

It was a prolongation of your colonial period with another
twist: the people above doing this colonial job were Indonesians,
not Dutch.

Y. SANTO

Jakarta