The footage of Dutch ‘Wiedergutmachung’ in Rawagede has rubbed some Dutch expats the wrong way. Claire Wilson in Malaysia feels deeply embarrassed by the late apologies and the meagre 20,000 euros’ worth of compensation for the six remaining next of kin; received from the hands of a flower petal strewing Dutch ambassador.
Dutch expat Claire Wilson
Claire (70) and her Australian husband live on top of a mountain in the federal state of Penang in Malaysia. They travel a lot, and Claire loves to write, paint and fuss over her orchids, which she grows on her balcony which offers a view of the Malacca Straits. Claire characterises herself as a ‘late bloomer’.
Dutch 'police actions'
The Dutch East Indies were occupied by Japan in March 1942. After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, nationalist leader Sukarno proclaimed Indonesian independence from the Netherlands. In 1947 and 1948-1949 Dutch forces carried out two seperate operations against nationalist forces in an attempt to restore Dutch rule over its former colony. The Dutch authorities call the military operations the 'police actions'. Eventually - as a result of huge pressure from the United States – the Netherlands was forced to recognise Indonesian independence in December 1949. About 150,000 Indonesians and 6,000 Dutch were killed in the fighting.
Headstone
The Dutch government is always eager to point its finger at other countries and show them the errors of their ways. On 9 December 2011, that same government showed it did not understand how corny the one-man show put up by Ambassador Tjeerd de Zwaan really was, clumsily strewing flower petals on the victims’ rudimentary graves.
Was there really absolutely nobody in the Dutch government or among the embassy staff who asked whether the next of kin - in addition to the 20,000 euros - might like a headstone on the graves of their loved ones? What the Netherlands did in 1947 was horrific. And what the Dutch government failed to do 64 years later was unforgiveable and a cause for acute embarrassment among Dutch people abroad who are able to distinguish right from wrong.
Inner civilisation
Wanti Sariman, one of the six surviving next of kin, was 26 and pregnant with her second child when her husband Tarman was shot dead by Dutch soldiers in Rawagade. She, and the other next of kin, have shown the Dutch government in the years following the massacre what inner refinement means, something that neither the 1947 government nor any of the succeeding Dutch governments possessed.
Some among you may blame me for being bitter, for seeing problems where there are none. But I know all too well, from my own experience, what war does to a person, what it smells like, feels like and what it looks like. As a child, I saw with my own eyes what some people can do to – innocent – others.
Maybe the Dutch government thought it was doing the right thing when it made Tjeerd de Zwaan walk through gravel, strewing flower petals on the victims’ graves from a reed basket. Fact is that thanks to the television footage the whole world now knows there is blood on that pointing finger, and has been for decades.
‘Police actions’
No Dutch government has ever made even the slightest attempt to prosecute the soldiers who carried out the massacre. In spite of a UN report which characterised the attack on Rawagede as ‘intentional and merciless’. The report was published back in 1948.
Only in 1968 did the Netherlands admit that violent excesses had occurred in Indonesia, which it then sought to belittle by arguing they were actually ‘police actions’ provoked by guerillas. In practice, these actions meant to arrest, line up and execute unarmed men and boys; put the dogs on those who manage to escape into the plantation and shoot them to let them bleed to death in the muddy swamp water.
Closure
To us, elderly Dutch citizens living abroad, it came as a shock to hear and read about this massacre, to see the photographs. Many of us lived through World War II, and later watched the ships return from the Dutch East Indies packed with Dutch soldiers and their Indonesian girlfriends and wives. Dutch history has many black pages. The courageous women from Rawagede on Friday simply said: 'We close this chapter'.
We should be grateful to God that these next of kin were still alive to get that closure.
(gsh/nc/tt)
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I spent two years in Indonesia as a marine and hate to hear over and over again how bad we were. I wonder what the reaction of those people would be if they would find their good friends cut up with their penis in their mouth. The marines were never ordered to burn kampongs or kill innocent people, that was a spontaneous natural reaction. Their have been more massacres than Rawagede that we never heard of. We were not that bad. I remember very well how we found Babat after the second politionele actie. For years they had been terrorized by their own people and starved to death. They did not have any clothing for years and we found dozens of people dead or dying on the street. The marines were able to capture a train loaded with rice from the peloppers that was stolen from those people. Within days the Red Cross came with truck loads of food and clothing.
My poor mother received 3000 guilders for all the suffering during the II World War, under the Japanese occupation, and loss of assets in Indonesia. That was more meagre than 20,000 Euros. The expats who did not feel all the pain of the victims of the Japanese occupation in Indonesia and the Bersiap time should shut up and hide their ignorance!.
How can anyone put a price on someone else's head? What is the difference? 3.000 guilders, 20.000 euro's, 1 million? It does not justify anything really....
Colonialism makes many wounds and Dutch colonialism is not different from colonialism of other European countries. Many innocent Dutch and Dutch-Indonesians, mostly children and women coming out of Japanese concentration camps, were victims of the noble and brave Indonesian freedom fighters.Nothing is mentioned or said about them. One should be reasonable and poised in his/her opinion.It is a shame that nothing is brought up about those many victims,victims of the Japanese and the Indonesians, more victims than the the people killed in Rawagede!.
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