Behind his warm smile and calm voice, Mr. Soengkono’s (83) hides a troubled past that is linked to a dark page of recent Indonesian history. I met him, not long ago, one afternoon in a community center in Diemen. There is a whole group of elderly people talking to each other in Indonesian.
All were once, like Soengkono, political refugees. No longer welcome in their homeland after General Suharto committed one of the largest mass murders of the last century there after 1965. An estimated 500,000 to 1 million people were killed during so-called anti-communist ‘purges’ after a failed coup. Suharto pushed President Sukarno aside.
Human rights violations
So there is now something to discuss, because President Joko Widodo recently expressed regret for that crime – and eleven smaller human rights violations. With Soengkono, sadness and anger battle for priority.
He left Indonesia in 1962 to study mechanical engineering in Moscow. “I thought I would be gone for five years. In the end, I never saw my parents again.”
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Soengkono says that at the time in Moscow, all Indonesians at the embassy were questioned about their loyalty. “If you supported Sukarno, your passport was taken away.” That happened to him too. At that time he was an engineer but stateless. He decided to go to China, one of the countries that was open to Indonesians after the failed coup. There he met his later wife Wati, who had studied medicine. She was also persona non grata in her own country, because she was the daughter of a former top Indonesian diplomat, who was also a Sukarno sympathizer.
They became a model immigrant family: he a logistics worker, she a nurse and their children became engineers and economists
Finally, in 1981, they applied for asylum in the Netherlands. “We missed our country. The Netherlands is the only European country with historical ties to Indonesia,” says Soengkono. He hoped that he could contact his family through the grapevine. Soengkono had not been heard from since the mid-1960s. “It was safer for my family.”
below their knowledge level
In the Netherlands, his engineering degree was not recognized, nor was his wife’s medical degree. So they took jobs well below their skill level. They did, however, continue to fight against human rights violations in Indonesia in organizations such as Komite Indonesia in Amsterdam. They became a model immigrant family: he a logistics worker, she a nurse and their children became engineers and economists.
Emotions are rising in Diemen. It’s good that history is being recognised. “But how can you be sorry without apologizing?” asks Soengkono indignantly. “We were treated like criminals. But who are the real culprits?” says another. Soengkono is happy that he was able to let his father know that he was still alive before his death in the mid-1980s. “But my mother died much earlier, without knowing anything about my fate.”