Not everyone is happy with the conclusions of the scientific research that the Dutch armed forces were guilty of extreme violence on a large scale during the colonial war in 1945-1949 in the former Dutch East Indies; extrajudicial killings, ill-treatment and torture, detention under inhumane conditions and arson of houses and villages.
If this has been the case, says Han Grünewald, born and raised in Central Java and one of the millions of people whose lives have been marked by the colonization of Indonesia, the question is whether the soldiers could have acted differently in all cases. Grünewald: „It was war. The soldiers did what I was also taught during my military service in the Netherlands: if you have to test someone, you have to torment him. I was told: when you stab with a bayonet, you must not only stab but also twist. Soldiers are taught to be ruthless, and they are.”
Grünewald (90) is a retired architectural draftsman and he works as a volunteer in the garden of the Indisch Museum Sophiahof in The Hague, where memories jump to mind, from a 1910 poster for the Indies Army to colorful anecdotes from volunteers and visitors about the belt. of emerald. Grünewald has always had a Dutch passport because a German great-great-grandfather had enlisted in the army in the Dutch East Indies. “He fought in the Aceh War.”
Father Grünewald worked as an Indonesian Dutchman on a Dutch sugar company, at home the family was raised in the Netherlands. During the Japanese occupation, father was mobilized for the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) and the children could stay at home with mother. She was spared internment because she was deemed necessary as an auxiliary nurse. Grünewald remembers how during the Bersiap, the phase in the Indonesian revolution in which thousands of Dutch and Indo-Dutch, Chinese and Indonesians suspected of ‘collaboration’ were murdered, mother and children had to flee and were not just ‘slaughtered’ along the way, as they heard the guards say to each other, through an acquaintance.
Later, after the reunification with father, the family experienced the first ‘police action’ in the Netherlands in 1947. Grünewald: „We lived in South Sumatra and were surrounded. Shots were fired and set on fire. Then came the police action. I cheered as a kid. We were liberated. If those soldiers hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here. Later on, I often had discussions with colleagues at work in the Netherlands about stories of violence by the Dutch such as Captain Westerling. I always said, what should we have done then? Should we have watched as we were slaughtered one by one? New. We had the means to resist – more than the opponent, I must admit.”
After Indonesia’s independence in the 1950s, Grünewald left for the Netherlands, having been assured at work in Jakarta that although he could apply for Indonesian nationality, he was ‘not a real Indonesian’ and for that reason would getting fired.
Revenge actions
In addition to the question of whether structural violence can be avoided in an armed conflict, there is also discussion about whether violence on the part of the Netherlands was so widespread. The Netherlands Veterans Institute dares to doubt that. Military historian Martin Elands, researcher at the institute, points out that this extreme violence was limited to the intelligence services, the special forces and to situations where the line between right and wrong was sought, for example when comrades had been brutally murdered and revenge was sought. take.
Elands: “The research could have been a bit broader. The use of extreme violence has been funneled into. We should of course not give the impression that it was a humanitarian mission. That makes us unbelievable. But there were also patrols and more or less sporting fights. And there have also been many military situations where everything seemed to indicate the use of extreme force, but where it has not happened. In many cases it is not derailed rather than it is. Let me make the dangerous comparison with football; a beautiful and tough match between Ajax and Feyenoord. As a scientist, if I do research into violations in that match, and especially by one party, then a fantastic report comes out which shows that, for example, half of the violations have been penalized and the other half have not. But if I showed that report to the spectators, the players, the coaches and the referee, they wouldn’t recognize themselves in that report of mine.”
Broader perspective
Director of the institute Paul Hoefsloot: “A broader perspective would have been desirable. If you don’t offer that perspective, you think it was all about mistreating and killing as many Indonesians as possible. That is not true. There have been units that really just completed a humanitarian mission. In this study, two hundred thousand people are actually lumped together. The 4,000 surviving veterans and their partners, children and grandchildren are now being told that what Grandpa did was wrong, that he was some sort of war criminal. I quite believe what has been written about the intelligence services and the special forces. Terrible things have happened, but that’s a small minority. A small number of them have experienced terrible things and they have not talked about it for a long time, they carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Now that wound is being reopened. I resent that.”
The veterans cannot emphasize it enough: if structural violence was used, it was done in the name of politics, in the name of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Hoefsloot: “Our king has previously apologized in Indonesia for the actions of the Dutch military. But our royal family has had an important role in maintaining this colony. How beautiful it would be if our king would once express a token of appreciation to these veterans. They did what society demanded: restore order and peace in the colony and ensure that the colony remained in Dutch possession. I want to break a lance for that.”
Also read about five issues from the Indonesia survey: The bamboo spear, the interrogation with the hammer and the judge who did nothing
You can of course also view this study in a very different way and say that after the capitulation of Japan, the Netherlands should never have tried to get the colony back at all – with or without excessive force – since Indonesia was wrongly regarded as property anyway. “Where did the Netherlands get the right to occupy such a distant country?” asks Indonesian chairman Jeffry Pondaag of the Committee of Dutch Honorary Debts, which wants to defend the interests of Indonesian victims of centuries of colonialism and for “reparation”. of the Dutch who refused service in Indonesia at the time.
More than four years ago, Pondaag and others accused the cabinet in an open letter that the colonial way of thinking “is not problematized as such” in the research. Pondaag: “People say that the investigation should have paid more attention to the extreme violence of the Indonesians. Is that right? In any case, that violence does not come out of the blue. The Dutch also complain that they suffered so much from gangs of robbers during the so-called Bersiap. Well, the Netherlands has robbed the country for three hundred and fifty years.”
Reluctance to conscription
One of the soldiers who were sent to Indonesia as a conscript is Leo van Bohemen, now 96 years old, from Leidschendam. He does not remember any atrocities, from the moment he and his younger brother were sent to the Indies in 1948 on the ship Zuiderkruis. “Most of the boys didn’t know about that,” he says. They arrived in March. Six months later, his brother died of typhus. He was back home before Christmas that year. What Leo van Bohemen does remember is the reluctance to travel to the distant colony. Van Bohemen: „I worked in my father’s company, he delivered butter, cheese and eggs. I had to leave that. You were told that we had to get a piece of the Netherlands back. Not a hair on our heads that thought we were doing something wrong. It was common for countries to have a colony. There were conscientious objectors: in our company there were those who pretended to be in a bad mood.”
In distant Indonesia, Van Bohemen was expected to patrol to protect a refinery. “I didn’t have to shoot.” It was scary. “You walked there in the pitch dark and you couldn’t trust anyone. That was very threatening. Many people have later been traumatized by this. I don’t, I’m too positive for that.”
Van Bohemen does not claim that extreme violence has not occurred. “No war is clean.” People get carried away: “If your buddy is shot and if you are also brainwashed, as it were, then the beast in the person comes out.”
Counter-guerrilla
Any more criticism? Bauke Geersing, former professional officer, former NOS director and author of a book about the controversial captain Raymond Westerling in Indonesia, lists a series of objections. The research is not broad enough; the researchers are “falsifying history” by pretending that the Indonesian Republic already existed in 1945 and had not just been proclaimed in Java by Hatta and Soekarno; the scientists have not focused sufficiently on violence by groups other than the Dutch; and finally, the term ‘excessive violence’ is not precise enough in his view.
He also disputes that the Dutch were insufficiently equipped to put down the revolt. Geersing: “The soldiers were properly prepared and conducted a mostly controlled counter-guerrilla, which impressed the population.” The fact that there were many more deaths on the Indonesian side than on the Dutch side says little about the nature of the violence, he says: “The fighters on Java and Sumatra sometimes thought they were invulnerable. They ran en masse towards the Dutch with their swords. An incomprehensible tactic, because they could shoot them like that. What would you do?”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 19 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 19, 2022