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AKARTA: Dutch Ambassador to Indonesia Tjeerd de Zwaan is scheduled to issue an apology during a memorial service in Rawagede village, now called Balong Sari, in Karawang, West Java, on Friday.

“[On Friday] the ambassador will come to Rawagede with us,” Jeffry M. Pondaag, the chairman of the KUKB foundation for Dutch honor debts told reporters on Thursday.

The Netherlands government will compensate victims of the Rawagede massacre, after it accepted a Dutch high court ruling stating that the Dutch government was guilty in the Rawagede massacre. Jeffry said that the ambassador would talk directly to the remaining victims of the tragedy.

 The KUKB is the foundation that has been assisting a group of the widows and relatives of nine victims who filed a lawsuit against the Dutch government over the tragedy.

On Monday, Dutch foreign minister Uri Rosenthal delivered an initial formal apology from the Netherlands, an act of contrition coming 64 years after the tragedy.

“This apology does justice to the seriousness of events in Rawagede. I hope it will help relatives give closure to this extraordinarily difficult episode in their lives and allow them to focus on the future,” the foreign minister said on Monday as quoted by DutchNews.nl.

Nikolaos van Dam, then Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, attended a memorial service in Rawagede in 2008, making him the first representative of his government to do so, although he was there only to pay respects.