Justice delayed, (some) justice achieved – is what happened to the Rawagede case. On Dec. 9, 1947, a Dutch army unit came to Rawagede, now called Balongsari, West Java, collected hundreds of unarmed male civilians and executed them. A Dutch civil court decided last week the Netherlands is responsible for these unlawful killings and has to compensate the victims’ families.
The verdict raises the question on the likelihood of similar cases in Dutch-East India to follow suit. But why did such a crime – in today’s parlance, a gross human rights violation – come into court only six decades later, and what role did the Netherlands and Indonesia play thus far?
The case illustrates the predominance of both Dutch and Indonesia’s state interests on their relationship over the fate of their citizens over the decades. History’s victims, as usual, are victims of contemporary lack of elite’s political will.
On the Dutch side, it represents the crumbling of a decades-long government position, even when they did not deny the cases, of avoidance and rejection of judicial prosecution. In the case of Rawagede, it started with the “deal” between commander Lt. Gen. S.H. Spoor and the prosecutor H.W. Federhof in January 1948 not to prosecute Maj. A. Wijnen who led the expedition.
But public debate on Dutch war crimes only came after an ex-Dutch soldier, Joop Hueting, in 1969 revealed similar cases that compelled the government to issue Excessennota – a report that recognized them only as “excessive acts” of the military. A prosecution would thus only create “confusion”.
Soon another ex-colonial soldiers J.A.A. Doorn and W.J. Hendrix, followed, whose book Ontsporing van Geweld (Derailment of Violence), describing similar cases, capturing public interest.
Indeed, there has been continuing state negligence of such cases “in 1948, 1969 and 1995”, which the Rawagede plaintiff advocate, Prof. Liesbeth Zegveld, saw as “a continuity of illegitimate acts of the [Dutch] State”.
Neither these nor critical reports and documentaries led to court proceedings, but public interest on recent past lingered on.
In 1987 a Dutch ex-cavalry officer, Col. (ret) C.A. Heshuhius, sparked controversy. He opposed historian Prof. L. de Jong, who was assigned to write an official history of the Netherlands during the WW-II, because De Jong, in his chapters on Indonesia, described cases such as Rawagede as “oorlogsmisdaden” (war crimes) – a sensitive concept in the Netherlands that reminded too much of Nazi war crimes.
Indie-veterans like Heshuhius were furious and succeeded to force De Jong to drop the term. His “victory” reflected the considerable influence of the Indie-veterans, whose interests were represented by the conservative political party VVD and protected by Prince Bernhard of Orange.
De Jong’s works became standard, but by saving the Indie-veterans’ prestige from fatal association with the Nazis, it helped the Dutch government avoid demanding investigations and eventually bringing the 76 cases (according to the Excessennota) to the court.
The 1990s were years of growing critical awareness of the Dutch colonial past. Among them: Graa Boomsma, a writer, son of an ex-soldier, demanded critical investigation and Jan Pronk, a minister and Dutch enfant terrible, insisted on the need to re-appreciate Sukarno and Indonesia’s independence proclamation of Aug. 17, 1945.
However, thanks to the Indie lobby, the Dutch cabinets succeeded to overcome attempts of reappraisal and avoided controversial issues that could lead to prosecution. They even prevented the Queen from expressing “excuse” on the colonial past when visiting Indonesia in 1995.
It took another decade before a Dutch Foreign Minister, Ben Bot, – himself, like most Indie-veterans, a former prisoner under Japanese rule in Batavia – deplored the fact that “the Dutch were on the wrong side of history” and pronounced a statement that sounded like a recognition of Aug. 17, 1945 as Indonesia’s independence date. In fact, it was a political, moral “aanvaarding” or acceptance, not de jure recognition.
Now, another decade yet again, a new generation has come with courage to reject state’s “verjaring” (expiry) argument and won the case.
Meanwhile, not only the Dutch, but we, Indonesians, as well had long ignored the importance of colonial and our own war crimes. We, too, need a serious reappraisal for the sake of our nation’s history, but also to honor victims.
The Soeharto government, the first to normalize full diplomatic relations with the Netherlands, had as paramount interest establishing economic aid. Neither side were interested in investigating the nation’s recent past. Decades on, despite critical voices at home and elsewhere, the New Order simply ignored them.
When I asked how should Indonesia respond to Dutch public demand for Queen Beatrice to “excuse” the colonial past, then Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, I recall, typically used an old Dutch expression: “Moeten wij oude koeien uit de sloot halen [Do we have to raise old wounds]?”
More crucially, though, how could one expect the Soeharto regime to be interested in past Dutch war crimes when the regime itself had committed similar crimes at home (1965-66, Aceh, Papua) and in her colony of Timor Leste?
Hence, in my view, the Rawagede case sends two messages: First, let justice take its course. The Dutch court has made it clear that similar cases – including the iconic Raymond Westerling case – could follow, provided the cases are clear-cut and eyewitnesses and evidence can be found.
Second, instead of amnesia and ignorance, Indonesia could instead learn from the Rawagede case by reflecting on its own human wrongs and compensate the victims. As the saying goes, truth and justice crushed to the ground, will rise again.
