The Papuans also come off badly in this triptych

The triptych High game in the East, the second part of which will be broadcast by BNNVARA this Wednesday, starts as a modern horror fairy tale. Presenter Diederik van Vleuten asks the sensational question at the start of each episode: “Can you imagine that a small country like the Netherlands almost caused World War III in the early 1960s?” Well, neither did Van Vleuten: “But it did happen.”

It must be said, however, that only a very superficial analysis of the complicated geopolitical game of chess around the former Dutch colony of New Guinea in August 1962 would have led to a subsequent world war. In this case, the makers want to give the last chapter of the Dutch colonial adventure in South-East Asia a bit of suspense.

The facts presented about the escalating conflict between the Netherlands and Indonesia, with the US and the Soviet Union in the background, have not been discovered by themselves. They come from books, documentaries and articles by others, but are retold by Van Vleuten. That’s why the presenter walks around in an empty history classroom setting where he talks about his amazing discoveries. This happens in a somewhat paternalistic we-form that tries to make the viewer complicit in what ‘we in our New Guinea’ did.

Not all sources are equally reliable. For example, Cindy Adams appears, the now 93-year-old American gossip queen of the New York Post who once wrote an ‘autobiography narrated by Sukarno himself’.

Extensive use has also been made of atmospheric images of the Polygon Journal with the nasal voice of Philip Bloemendal: perhaps good for tapping into the nostalgic feelings of older viewers, but as a historical source it can only be used if accompanied by a leaflet: it would no longer be said about the original inhabitants of West Papua that “people lives in a state of nature and yet benefits from civilization”.

Papuans

Mostly Dutch men who were sent to the colony very young, one as administrative civil servant and others as conscripted soldiers, are given the floor. This results in a reduction of what that part of Indonesia must have looked like at the time. After all, not all administrative officials were twenty-year-old boys. And especially many Papuans lived in Papua. But apart from Dutch-born Nancy Jouwe, daughter of Nicolaas Jouwe who was vice-chairman of the New Guinea Council, none of them speak. While there are enough Papuan eyewitnesses to that part of history in the Netherlands. In the documentary, Papuans are mainly represented by naked black people in a half-finished country, where the Dutch ‘have come to bring civilization’, according to the voice over.

Van Vleuten tells the old-fashioned way from a Dutch perspective, and in terms of content there doesn’t seem to be much development between 1962 and 2023 in the Dutch mentality. Take the treatment of the historical figure Sukarno. Together with Mohammad Hatta, he proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia in 1945. In his history lesson, Master Van Vleuten says about the transfer of sovereignty in 1949: “Indonesia finally gained its independence.” Got? Indonesia had to wage a bloody war for almost five years. And in the Second World War, according to Van Vleuten, Sukarno was, with a finger in the air, ‘a collaborator’ with Japan: “We have not forgotten that yet.”

No, but proper historical research has now been carried out, which shows that in addition to the Dutch colonial perspective, another less caricatural view is also possible.

Self-determination right

Okay, and then the Third World War. Indeed, it almost broke up between the US and the Soviet Union, but that was in 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is briefly mentioned in the documentary. The New Guinea issue, although related to the Cold War, was mainly settled at the diplomatic negotiating table in the US. The military tension between the Netherlands and Indonesia was caused by the Netherlands not wanting to let go of the colony. ‘We’ had discovered the right of self-determination of the Papuans, and incidentally also a lot of gold and copper. Sukarno increased the pressure with frequent infiltrations. And as the documentary shows: The Netherlands sank one Indonesian ship that steamed up within the territorial waters.

More serious was the involvement of the Soviets. Sukarno signed a contract with Moscow to supply weapons. And Russia sent ships, submarines and planes, including Russian military personnel.

With much fanfare, the documentary tells about the Russian submarine S-235, which on 16 August 1962 was ordered to torpedo the Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen at five o’clock in the morning local time in the port of Manokwari.

That attack fell through because the Netherlands yielded to American pressure earlier at the negotiating table to transfer the sovereignty of this territory to the UN.

Lieutenant Matthijs Ooms already made this revelation in his UvA master’s thesis in 2012. This was reported by Leiden historian Martin Bossenbroek in the Historical Newspaper in October 2013.

It’s a missed opportunity that High game in the East has no longer worked on the actual theme: the right of self-determination of the Papuans. In short, more Nan-cy Jouwe and less Diederik van Vleuten.