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New war study sparks call for self-reflection
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A relief depicting the 1947 Rawagede massacre of Indonesians by Dutch soldiers is displayed in the town of Rawagede in West Java, on Sept. 15, 2011. (AFP/Romeo Gacad)
W
hile the government has not yet responded to a fresh apology from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for the “extreme violence” committed by Dutch forces during Indonesia’s national revolution, an Indonesian historian has said it is time for the country to confront its own violence during the period.
The prime minister made the apology shortly after the publication of an extensive study on the bloody revolutionary period on Thursday, in which a group of mostly Dutch historians argued that the Dutch had committed systemic and extreme violence against Indonesians as they sought to reassert control over their colony after World War II.
The study, funded by the Dutch government and conducted by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), challenged the official Dutch stance that, in general, their armed forces had behaved correctly in Indonesia between 1945 and 1949.
Mea culpa
“I present my deepest excuses to the people of Indonesia for the systematic and extreme violence from the Dutch side in those years," Rutte said, adding he was also sorry for the "subsequent blind eye by various previous Dutch governments".
Rutte is the first prime minister of the Netherlands to apologize for Dutch violence during the period. During his visit to Indonesia in 2020, Dutch King Willem-Alexander offered an apology for "excessive violence" suffered by Indonesians during the revolutionary years, acknowledging the period as a "painful separation".
Jakarta has not responded to the study or to Rutte’s apology.
