Her father’s parents came to the Netherlands after the Indonesian War of Independence. “My grandfather was with the military police. He mainly told how his wife and the family came to the Netherlands earlier, and that he then came to the Netherlands. That must have been very tough, leaving your family in your own country. Then with the thought: I will come back. It seems very hard to me that you will not find out to our own house at all.”
In 1951, thousands of Moluccans arrived in the Netherlands by boat, after having fought on the Dutch side in the Dutch East Indies. Many of them were housed in former war camps, such as Camp Westerbork. The Group Moluccans stayed here awaiting its own Moluccan state, a republic that had already been declared.
The KNIL soldiers were not allowed to work in the Netherlands in that first period. They also no longer received a soldier and pension and were stateless. The suitcases were still packed in many Moluccan families. Ready to go back. But that independent state never came. The temporary stay of the Moluccans in the Netherlands became final.
“The promise that they could go back, especially to my parents and also the generation, they have not been able to resolve and we are still here,” says the father Van Zoë, Remco Tauran. “So it is very difficult for the second generation to see that the first generation is crushing here and actually dies on unknown land.”
The way her family and other Moluccans are treated is still an open wound in the family. Zoë: “I have always seen the pain in my grandfather’s eyes. You just take that with you. My father has taken over that and I too. I notice that I sometimes feel anger.”
Zoë believes that there was little attention for this side of history for this side of history. “I didn’t learn anything about that at school. When I say: ‘Moluccans’, I also often get the question:’ What is that actually, Moluccs. And I find that quite a bit. That people do not know at all and that we are just a kind of forgotten people. That is why I think this is also very important.”
Images of other wars also touch her. “The fact that you can’t do anything about it, creating nothing else by placing things on my Instagram, that feels powerless.”
As an ambassador for freedom, Zoë dives into the Moluccan archive and investigates her family history. “Impressive. Of course I know the story of my grandfather and grandmother, and so there are so many more stories and people. Every innocent person deserves freedom.”