The worst thing about that research into the colonial Indies past is that it paints such a negative image of the Dutch, Marie-Louise Cuijpers wrote in a letter to NRC† On the phone she says that she knows that “the Dutch have of course done very bad things in that time”. But now next week the research will be presented through the historical centers KITLV, NIOD and NIMH to the violent military actions of the Netherlands during the Indonesia War (1945-1950) she hopes that Dutch people who did do good things were also looked at.
Cuijpers (1938) herself was in a Japanese concentration camp as a child with her mother. Her father was a secondary school teacher. “And from 1920 to 1950 he taught Indonesian boys. My aunt Nonneke was a missionary sister and she worked in a hospital where the poor were nursed for free. Could this perhaps also be listened to and not just those who exaggerate and magnify everything terribly?”
Marie-Louise Cuijpers is certainly not the only one bracing herself now that the results of the research will be announced after five years. There have been signs of anxiety and anger for much longer. For example, the Dutch Federation of Indies (FIN), chaired by Hans Moll, objected in 2019 by open letter to the investigation of the three institutions. He feared that it would only focus on cross-border violence on the part of the Dutch side, and that the Bersiap period would also be ignored. This concerns the months that elapsed between the Japanese capitulation on 15 August 1945 and the arrival of the first ships with Dutch troops in the spring of 1946. The newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia did not yet have an army. During that vacuum of authority, gangs of rebellious youth attacked anyone they associated with the colonial regime, killing thousands.
It is not easy to get a clear picture of the Indies community, precisely because it concerns a mixed group. It is just as stratified and divided as the Indies society was in the colony
Moll said by phone this week that he was kindly received by the leaders of the research project at the time. “We had a good conversation, but they couldn’t completely take away my concerns. What concerns us is that the entire investigation is aimed at those acts of violence committed by Dutch soldiers without taking into account the thousands of lives they have saved.”
At the time, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Stef Blok (VVD) responded with the assurance that the investigation of the three institutions was conducted completely independently of the state. Incidentally, Bloks showed ‘human rights lecture’ at Leiden University on December 10, 2019 that he himself has an Indian past, as the son of a father who had been in a Japanese camp as a child. He quoted from his father’s memories: „So my father also writes about the moment when his own mother […] is told that her husband, who is currently imprisoned in another camp, is seriously ill. But that due to all the violence in Indonesia – the Bersiap – it is too dangerous to visit him.” His grandfather did not survive. Stef Blok also belongs to the ‘Indian community’.
Since the end of the Second World War – and especially since the transfer of sovereignty from the Dutch East Indies colony to the Republic of Indonesia in December 1949 – this community has mostly settled destitute in the former mother country. In the end, about 350,000 people were involved. A last group came over after 1962, when the Netherlands had to leave New Guinea or Irian Jaya under international pressure.
It is not easy to get a clear picture of the Indies community, precisely because it concerns a mixed group. It is just as stratified and divided as the Indies society was in the colony. So including social and ethnic barriers and color differences. Despite all the differences, this community, in addition to the same geographical origin, has been left with a shared culture and – not unimportantly – similar traumas from the violence that ended the colonial period.
Egg
Since 1991 there has been a clear counter, the Indisch Platform, which was established at the request of then Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers (CDA). The reason was an incident at the annual commemoration on 15 August of the end of the Second World War in Indonesia. Protesters threw the wreath into the water that the Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu had laid at the Indian Monument in The Hague. The photo went around the world. Lubbers himself was hit by an egg on that occasion. The Prime Minister was then willing to consult with the demonstrators, but only on the condition that they join forces in one organization.
The Indisch Platform defines the Indies community as ‘all Dutch people and their descendants, who originate from the former Dutch East Indies and former Dutch New Guinea, or who resided there’. There are now several million. A wide variety of Indonesian organizations are affiliated with the platform, ranging from the Indisch Familie Archief Foundation, to the Dutch East Indies Association, the Japanese Indian Descendants Association and the National Moluccan Elderly Foundation.
Photos ANP
The then foreman of the Indische Platform, Herman Bussemaker, who has since passed away, mainly focused on what he did “Indian Sorrow” mentioned. It involved a frantic fight for recognition, and for financial compensation for war damage, payment of lost salaries from Japanese captivity and damages. And actually it was about the general feeling within the Indies community that history had been cheated: expelled from ‘paradise’, humiliated by the Japanese, violated by the Indonesians and scorned by the Dutch.
The Dutch state presented a ‘Gebaar’, ie a benefit to everyone who had arrived in the Netherlands from Indonesia after the war. There was a “symbolic sum” for the unpaid salaries of Indian government employees. And recently an extra twenty million was paid for projects in the field of the ‘collective recognition of the Indies community’. A split from the Indian Platform, led by Peggy Stein, gave notice to see this new gesture as a ‘buy-off sum of the actual restoration of rights’.
Consolation
An organization such as the Pelita Foundation, which has been concerned for 75 years with the well-being of the elderly in particular, is strongly focused on offering comfort. At gatherings called ‘Come in’ (Masuk sadja) the elderly can muse together about the past, talk about the colors and smells and the krontjong music of the past. During a livestream at the celebration of Pelita’s 75th anniversary last month, director Rocky Tehuteru explained how the organization will deal with the “culture-specific care demand of the second generation”.
Journalist Hans Goedkoop, who led the event, noted that he himself is also “becoming more Indian” as he gets older. “The funny thing is,” said Goedkoop, “I have never experienced that world of the past.[…] But is there something. Before I get up, I think, ‘Oh God, now you’re fooling yourself, fake Indo’. And then we are busy and then I think: ‘Hey, nice’.”
Also read: Testimonials that mobilize the feelings
Pelita will provide another livestream this Saturday about the impact of the ‘decolonization investigation’. Although the results of the study are not yet known, its appearance means according to Pelita A lot of emotions are already released among those involved, and that is ‘almost everyone with a background in the Dutch East Indies’. People who, for example, served in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) or who were deployed from the Netherlands, are concerned that they will be deported as war criminals, according to the organization.
Leo Reawaruw, frontman of the Moluccan organization Maluku4Maluku, confirms this. Of all the former inhabitants of the Dutch East Indies, the Moluccan KNIL soldiers received the most gracious treatment from the Dutch state. The soldiers were involuntarily deported to Europe, demobilized, made stateless citizens and housed in barracks of former German concentration camps. Reawaruw says he stands firm for ‘KNIL-Ambonezen’, such as his now deceased father and two uncles. „If they are going to say in that investigation that my father or my uncles are some kind of SS men, war criminals, well, then I won’t talk anymore. Then I become mataglap.”
Correction 12/2: In an earlier version, the sociologist Jacques van Doorn was mistakenly called Harry van Doorn. That has been fixed above.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad on 12 February 2022
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of February 12, 2022