LIVE | Veterans’ platforms in Chamber: ‘Rutte’s response to the Dutch East Indies research hurts a lot’ | Inland

The House of Representatives will speak on Monday with veterans’ platforms, memorial committees and other experts about the multi-year study into the independence war in Indonesia (1945-1949). The main conclusion of that research, published in February, was that there was structural excessive violence by Dutch soldiers, with the knowledge of the military and political top.

Parliamentary reporter Peter Winterman follows the conversation. Follow his live report at the bottom of this post.

According to the veterans’ platforms, the government-funded research is one-sided and politically biased. “The impression has been wrongly created that everyone who has walked around there is some kind of war criminal,” says Hans van Griensven, chairman of the Veterans Platform. According to him, about 5 to 10 thousand soldiers have been guilty of senseless violence: a fraction of the total number of 220,000 soldiers sent to the Dutch East Indies.

Paul Hoefsloot of the Netherlands Veterans Institute says that the researchers have presented an ‘unbalanced picture’. For example, too little attention is paid to the violence on the Indonesian side. He is not pleased with Prime Minister Rutte’s reaction to the investigation in February. “That reaction was extremely painful. I think the Prime Minister has something to fix towards the veterans.”

Prime Minister Mark Rutte offered ‘deep apologies’ to the people of Indonesia in response to the investigation into the independence war. On behalf of the Dutch government, he also apologized to everyone who became involved in this period in our country, including the veterans. The Netherlands distanced itself from the old official position that ‘extreme force was only used in exceptional cases’ and the conclusion drawn by the De Jong cabinet in the 1969 excesses memorandum ‘that the armed forces as a whole behaved correctly’. Rutte believes that the term ‘police actions’ should no longer be used, but that we should talk about a ‘colonial war’. He also discussed the use of the term Bersiap, the period in which Indonesian nationalists committed violence against Dutch and Indo-Dutch people who had been liberated from the Japanese camps. The government now also wants to deal with the use of this term differently.

“I use the term in quotation marks because I realize that the term is under discussion,” Rutte said. “But I also want to establish that the term Bersiap has a place in the Dutch collective memory and in particular has a lot of value and meaning for the Indies community in the Netherlands for the great suffering that has been caused to them. The cabinet wants to respect that by using the term in quotation marks, but not putting it on the shelf.” Rutte said there will be a separate study on the violence on the Indonesian side.

“The research shows that drivers in the Netherlands knew about violence,” says Hoefsloot of the Veterans Institute. “That’s what they urged. They used that to get the win. You cannot shift that responsibility onto the veterans, who were just doing their job.” The veterans’ platforms did not respond enthusiastically to a question from MPs whether there should be a new investigation into the Indies war. “I spoke to a 95-year-old veteran at the beginning of March who said: if you had waited five years with this research, I would not have had to experience this,” says Hoefsloot. “So my answer is no, please don’t re-examine.”

At the National Remembrance Day, the National Committee on 4 and 5 May this year for the first time named the victims of the ‘colonial war’ in Indonesia. “Yes, of course we have had reactions to this change,” says board member Liane van der Linden of the committee. “We are not in favor of pointing out perpetrators, but of seeking the connection in commemoration and in healing. But we must recognize that it was a colonial war. We were on the wrong side of history, as Ben Bot said in 2005.”

John Sijmonsbergen, vice-chairman of the National Commemoration Foundation 15 August 1945, thinks that Rutte reacted ‘too quickly’ to the research report. “Unfortunately, the perception of the research is one of generalizations,” he says. “From keeping small in the 1970s, the balance now tilts to the other side, making it as big as possible: everyone and everything was involved. That leads to painful generalizations for victims and veterans.” Sijmonsbergen hopes for ‘more nuance’ in the extensive government response that is yet to follow.

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