History’s victims are commonly victims of lack of political will among contem-porary elite. Indeed it took more than six decades before judges of a new generation in the Netherlands decided in 2011 to deal with cases of executions of civilians in Indonesia during the 1940s – e.g. the Rawagede case in 1947 – as ‘unlawful killings’.
Thus Dutch excessive war violence in Indonesia can no longer be put aside as ‘expired’ – which the plaintiff advocate, prof. Liesbeth Zegveld, saw as a break-through in “a continuity of illegitimate acts of the (Dutch) State” (Radio Netherlands 2011).
As a consequence, the Dutch government has quickly sought and reached a legal settlement to offer an official apology for Captain Raymond P.W. Westerling 1946-1947-mass executions in South Sulawesi – which the Dutch Ambassador Tjeerd de Zwaan last week made to the ten victims’ relatives in Jakarta.
Up to the late-1950s, Captain Westerling was an icon, worshipped as he was as a ‘great patriot’ for whom schoolchildren every morning sung a song and prayed for his well being. Only a decade later, however, the Dutch public was deeply shocked as Joop Hueting, a former soldier assigned in Java in the 1940s, told before the television in 1969: “ .. in one village house, a corporal used all bullets he had. And I saw some 20 men, women and children, some were hysteric, others bleeding and dead”.
Hueting’s ‘bomb’ touched the nerves of Dutch conscience and politics. PM Piet de Jong was forced to response and issued Excessennota (1969) that “deplored” such “excesses”, but emphasized that “our military, as a whole, did behave correctly” – a statement that soon appeared dishonest as public debate began to question it, and books, novels, and witness stories on similar events were published throughout the later years.
Thus was born problem of ‘Indie veterans’ (former soldiers in the Netherlands-Indies) as they began to gather strength to resist war crime allegations. In 1987 prof. Loe de Jong, who was assigned to write the official history of the Netherlands during the WW-II, was forced to delete the term ‘war crime’ in his chapter on the Indonesian revolution.
Such controversies eventually led to hot political issue of whether the Dutch state should offerapology. Time and again the Dutch administration was pressed to do so, but politicians’ and judicial authorities’ mindset changed slowly. Public debate has never been conclusive. Accordingly, even if admitted, none of the veterans accused of wrongdoings were ever prosecuted.
Next, thanks to the pressures of Prince Bernhard and the liberal-conservative political party VVD, respectively the patron and ally of the Indie veterans, Queen Beatrice had to cancel her presence and plan to offer an official apology at the 50-year commemoration of Indonesia’s independence on August 17, 1995 in Jakarta.
It was not until a decade later, though, as the Indie veterans’ influence declined, when Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot – himself, like many Dutch and Indies veterans, a former Japan’s war prisoner in Java – attended the commemoration of August 17, 2005 in Jakarta and declared that “the Dutch were on the wrong side of the history” as he acknowledged Indonesia’s historic date of independence.
This de facto, i.e. political-moral acceptance, rather than de jure recognition, of Indonesia’s independence date means that any official apology expressed by the Dutch government toward local war crime victims related to the 1940s events, needs to be framed within Dutch legal framework. In other words, the apology is theoretically intended for them in their formal status as former Dutch East Indies onderdaan (subject), rather than as Indonesian citizen.
Above all, any official form of de jure recognition would imply that the Indie veterans had actually fought in Indonesia as ‘aggressor’ rather than ‘restoring order’, which would basically deny their patriotism and loyalty to the Royal family.
What is more, the fact that they were now also burdened with war crimes allegations might put them equal to the Nazi, who occupied the Netherlands during the WW-II. In postwar Netherlands, there is no greater taboo – a worse stigma – than this. Hence, Dutch veterans’ resistance.
On the Indonesian side, Jakarta has always seemed reluctant to deal with the issue. ‘Moeten wij oude koeien uit de sloot halen?’ (Do we have to raise old wounds?)’, Foreign Minister Ali Alatas told me in 1995 on the eve of Dutch Queen state visit. Obviously Dutch and Indonesia’s paramount interests were to nurture a good economic and trade relation.
Now, however, Minister Marty Natalegawa has for the first time “warmly welcomed” Dutch apology, although Indonesian officials were significantly absent in last week ceremony.
It’s true, the fact that precisely the Dutch, the former colonial ruler, refused to fully recognize Indonesia’s historic date of independence, is still painful to many Indonesians. Nonetheless, the Indonesian state’s stance is clear: once we proclaimed it on August 17, 1945, it will remain our independence date no matter what outsiders claim.
While this gap between the state’s stance and the society’s desire for full recognition of independence date remains unresolved, the uneasiness about Dutch apology may have been compounded by similar, more recent, and even more urgent issues.
For, had not the state that is now offered apology and “warmly welcomes” it, itself been involved in similar violence and war crimes against civilians in recent past?
A new awareness has undeniably been growing among Indonesians at home and abroad around Indonesia’s past atrocities ever since its Human Rights National Commission issued its 2011 report on the 1965-66 massacres and public interest grew on the issues and events surrounding the killings as demonstrated by responses to Joshua Oppenheimer’s exceptional documentary film ‘The Act of Killing’ (2012) and the weekly TEMPO’s coverage, Jagal, on the testimonies of 1965-killers.
Hence, once we accept (Dutch) apology on similar cases, it would only be fair, consistent and ethical, at least for domestic aim, for the Indonesian state to seriously make a critical reappraisal of our own gross violations of human rights i.e. the 1965-66 genocide and the war crimes its Army committed in former East Timor (1975-1999) – not to mention Aceh and Papua – for the sake of reconciliation and to honor and compensate the victims.
When justice is delayed, even honest apology may not be satisfying whereas unresolved human wrongs would only shape a burden of painful legacy.
