T

he Dutch, quick to moralize about human rights abuses by other nations, have never properly examined or debated the unpleasant history of their own experience in the colonial war.

Dutch society seems to suffer from collective amnesia when it comes to the murderous behavior of the soldiers who tried unsuccessfully to suppress the Indonesian independence movement in the jungles of Java and other islands almost 50 years ago.

Young conscript soldiers, acting under orders, put numerous hamlets to the torch and butchered men, women and children.

In the trial Mr Boomsma referred to the most notorious atrocities committed by the Dutch in Indonesia over Christmas 1946 in the south Celebes.

A battalion under Captain Raymond Westerling killed at least 4,000 Indonesians over a two-month period. Charges were never brought against Westerling and his men, or the military and political leaders who ordered the action.

The war crimes against Indonesian villagers were committed with the direct knowledge of The Hague, at about the same time that Germany'€™s Nazi leaders were being tried in Nuremberg.

Jop Hueting, perhaps the most famous Dutch soldier of the Indonesian war, who was decorated for the bravery he displayed in an airborne assault on Jakarta, has compared some of the massacres he witnessed to the My Lai incident during the Vietnam War.

Mr Hueting, who was also in court as a possible witness for the defense, says the comparison between the Nazi SS and the Dutch forces is appropriate, because '€˜it is a metaphor for unbelievably violent behavior by our forces'€™.

T. Frank Lance
JAKARTA