Dutch military intelligence services were guilty of systematic torture of Indonesian prisoners on a large scale during the Indonesian War of Independence. Torture was officially prohibited but was “in fact unofficial policy.” Furthermore, the services practiced counter-terrorism with death squads (hit squads). “The relatively small intelligence services had a disproportionately large share in the extreme violence committed by the Dutch armed forces from 1945 to 1949.” Rémy Limpach comes to these conclusions in the book Groping in the dark. Intelligence struggle during the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 that was presented this Tuesday in Amsterdam.
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The study presented simultaneously Languages of violence. Silence, information and deception in the Indonesian War of Independence 1945-1949 by Remco Raben and Peter Romijn describes how it was possible that information about human rights violations by Dutch troops in Indonesia barely reached the Netherlands. And why it was that, if exceedances were sometimes known, they were accepted.
Raben and Romijn attribute this “broad tolerance of violence” to, among other things, the fact that the Dutch colonial administration in Indonesia was a “bureaucratic dictatorship”, without control mechanisms of the democratic constitutional state.
The military action was the result of “deeply ingrained patterns” during the long period of colonial rule. “The Netherlands was guided by colonial motives, prejudice, patronage and control.” Politicians felt little responsibility for the violence due to “their geographical and mental distance.” The authors call this “colonial dissociation.”
Bloody and cruel
Both investigations also establish that the Indonesian side also committed bloody and cruel actions, often against its own population. But they also note that the motives of the Netherlands and Indonesia differed. Limpach: “In this way, the Indonesians waged a justified war against a colonial power (…).” An estimated 100,000 Indonesians lost their lives in the war, 5,300 Dutch soldiers, 10,000 Indonesians of Chinese descent, 2,000 British and Japanese and approximately 6,000 Dutch or Indo-European and Moluccan civilians. The number of victims of violence between Indonesian factions is unknown and therefore not included.
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“Not much was known about the intelligence war until now,” Limpach said at the presentation. He has filled that gap with this book. One of his new findings is that the Netherlands has won the armed military struggle, but has lost the battle against the Indonesian intelligence services.
The Netherlands was guided by colonial motives, prejudice, patronage and control
Remco Raben and Peter Romijn researchers
Limpach: “What I also didn’t know about is that intelligence services are small hit squads who, dressed as guerrillas, carried out assassinations behind the borders. The Netherlands was therefore continuously guilty of the ceasefire violations of which it accused the Indonesians.”
According to him, the war was based “on politically biased, biased and amateurish Dutch intelligence work.” The guiding principles were “paternalistic, orientalist and racist mentalities that were deeply rooted in the colonial past.” Limpach points to military commander General Simon Spoor as an important military official. According to him, “this authoritarian and stubborn KNIL officer” made “the intelligence services an instrument of his aggressive policy.”
Apologies
The books that appeared this Tuesday are the result of the research program Independence, decolonization, violence and war in Indonesia 1945-1950, carried out under the responsibility of the Royal Institute of Language, Agriculture and Ethnology, the Netherlands Institute for Military History and NIOD Institute for War. -, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. The summary main report Across the border was published February 22 last year. The main conclusion at the time was that Dutch soldiers structurally applied extreme violence in the war with Indonesia and that this was covered up politically, judicially and militarily. In response to the report, Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) apologized to the government of Indonesia.
He did this again during the debate with the House of Representatives on the final report on June 13 this year. The government endorsed the conclusions of the report and thus revised the position that the government had taken since 1969, namely that apart from a number of excesses, the Dutch armed forces as a whole have behaved correctly. However, Rutte refused to respond to GroenLinks’ request to politically recognize August 17, 1945, the day of the proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia. The colonial war thus remains an ‘internal conflict’. Jakarta has not responded to the Dutch apology.
Also read this article: Rutte: deeply apologizes for systematic and extreme violence in Indonesia
October 3, 2023: this article has been updated after the presentation of the books discussed.