The Indonesian struggle for Independence 1945 – 1949

Excessive violence examined

University of Amsterdam Bastiaan van den Akker Student number: 11305061 MA Holocaust and Genocide Studies Date: 28-01-2021 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ugur Ümit Üngör Second Reader: Dr. Hinke Piersma Abstract The pursuit of a free Indonesian state was already present during Dutch rule. The Japanese occupation and subsequent years ensured that this pursuit could become a reality. This thesis examines the last 4 years of the Indonesian struggle for independence between 1945 and 1949. Excessive violence prevailed during these years, both the Indonesians and the Dutch refused to relinquish hegemony on the archipelago resulting in around 160,000 casualties. The Dutch tried to forget the war of Indonesian Independence in the following years. However, whistleblowers went public in the 1960’s, resulting in further examination into the excessive violence. Eventually, the seems to have come to terms with its own past since the first formal apologies by a Dutch representative have been made in 2005. King Willem-Alexander made a formal apology on behalf of the Crown in 2020. However, high- school education is still lacking in educating students on these sensitive topics. This thesis also discusses the postwar years and the public debate on excessive violence committed by both sides. The goal of this thesis is to inform the public of the excessive violence committed by Dutch and Indonesian soldiers during the Indonesian struggle for Independence.

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Index Introduction ...... 3 Defining the problem ...... 3 Merdeka ...... 3 Thesis setup ...... 6 Methodology and sources ...... 7 ...... 9 Growing nationalist sentiment ...... 9 The proclamation ...... 11 English-Dutch relations and intervention...... 13 “Be ready” ...... 15 ...... 17 ...... 21 Allied war crimes ...... 22 Casualties ...... 23 Linggadjati ...... 24 Police-Actions ...... 26 Breaking with the Linggadjati-accords ...... 26 The way to Indonesia ...... 27 Police Actions: an overview ...... 28 Excessive violence ...... 30 Westerling ...... 35 Why? ...... 39 Aftermath ...... 43 Criticism and reconciliation ...... 43 Early criticism ...... 43 The Hueting Affair and the Excess Nota ...... 44 1970 – present ...... 47 Responses by veterans ...... 49 Seeking recognition ...... 51 The Police Actions in Dutch high-school education ...... 53 To conclude ...... 56 Literature and sources ...... 60

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Introduction Colonial uprisings are centuries old. Be it the American Revolution or the war, every uprising started with an oppressed population. The Indonesian struggle for Independence does not differ in this. When people think of Indonesia, most will think of the white sandy beaches of , or the busy streets of . Most people, however, will not think of the years of violence between 1942 and 1949 when the Japanese occupation and the ensuing fight for independence ripped the archipelago apart.

Defining the problem The aforementioned observation encompasses what this thesis is about. What do the Dutch really know about Indonesia? During the last few decades, the general public has been made more aware of the atrocities that were committed by Dutch and Indonesian soldiers. Television-programs like Andere Tijden and Onze Jongens op Java gave the viewer a sense of what happened.1 However, as time progresses, a sense of amnesia seems to have set in, and the last Dutch colonial war is being forgotten. Recent studies also show that in Dutch high schools the are rarely discussed during history classes, let alone the Indonesian War of Independence.2 The main task of this thesis is to investigate What happened in Indonesia in the aftermath of World War Two and how these violent years are being discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse.

Indonesia Merdeka When Japan surrendered in World War Two, Indonesian nationalist leader Soekarno was quick to proclaim Indonesian independence on August 17th 1945.3 Because of the intense Japanese militarization of Indonesia, Soekarno could now count on some 2,000,000 men and women fighting in the Barisan Pelopper, the Indonesian independence army.4 The Japanese were tasked with the security of the archipelago, but were unable to keep the peace. When in September 1945 British troops arrived to ensure peace, the situation escalated. Because the Japanese left and the British did not have enough manpower, most nationalists went on a rampage and it became increasingly dangerous for Europeans to walk the streets. The Dutch, who still had formal control of Indonesia, were unable to send any troops in the aftermath of World War Two. This period between the arrival of British and Dutch troops

1 VPRO ‘Koloniale oorlog’ on Andere Tijden https://www.anderetijden.nl/dossier/9/Koloniale-oorlog; BNNVARA ‘Onze Jongens op Java’ on Onze Jongens op Java https://www.npostart.nl/onze-jongens-op-java/BV_101395134. 2 Ilse Raaijmakers, ‘De Indonesische dekolonisatie’ in Nationaal comité 4 en 5 mei – onderzoek uitgelicht Vol.6.1 (July 11, 2017) 26 – 27. 3 George Kahin, ‘’s proclamation of Indonesian Independence’, in: Indonesia vol.69 (2000) 1 – 3. 4 Herman Bussemaker, Bersiap! Opstand in het paradijs; De Bersiap-periode op Java en Sumatra 1945-1946 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers 2005) 45 – 46. 3 is also known as the Bersiap-period (Be ready).5 Eventually, Dutch Major-General Schilling concluded that it would be impossible for the Dutch to completely restore and Dutch rule on the archipelago. This reality forced the Dutch government to reflect on what it actually wanted with the Indies, and to what extent the British still wanted to go along with that.6 On November 15th 1946 Dutch representatives Max van Poll, Wim Schemerhorn and Feike de Boer met with Indonesian representative Soetan Sjahrir in the Indonesian village of Linggadjati to discuss Indonesian autonomy.7 It was agreed at the Linggadjati-accords that the Netherlands would recognize the authority of the Indonesian Republic on Java and Sumatra. The Republic would cooperate in a of three federal states, which would consist of the Republic, and Eastern-Indonesia. The sovereignty would lie with the federation. The Netherlands and Indonesia would form a union for their common interests, headed by the Queen of the Netherlands.8 The agreement caused a storm of protest in both the Netherlands and the Republic.9 In the meantime, Republican troops increasingly violated the treaty and little was done for the return of Dutch companies and the protection of Dutch companies. Also, the Netherlands was no longer a colonial power, but reduced to a minor power.10 That is why the Dutch government decided to put things in order through military intervention, this military intervention would be known as the Police- Actions. In two short Police-Actions (: July–August 1947 and Operation Crow: December 1948–January 1949) Dutch troops managed to attain nominal control, only to find themselves caught in a guerrilla war and that proved impossible to win. During these Police-Actions excessive violence on both sides became apparent.11 Obviously, ‘excessive violence’ is not a neutral term but a phrase used to avoid the politically and morally charged term of ‘war crimes’. In this thesis, excessive violence refers to war crimes in the way as they are described in Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International criminal court such as wilful killing, torturing, kidnapping or in any way scar another person for life.12 After the war there was a culture of silence considering the Police-Actions in the Netherlands. This changed when conscript Joop Hueting opened up, first in the newspaper De Volkskrant and a few

5 Marcel van Riessen,‘De Indonesische kwestie’ in: Marcel van Riessen Frits Rovers en Arie Wilschut (red.), Oriëntatie op Geschiedenis (: van Gorcum 2011) 440. 6 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 27 – 31. 7 Wim van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië – De val van het Nederlandse imperium in Azië (Amsterdam: Prometheus 2000) 166 – 169. 8 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 317 – 322. 9 van Riessen, ‘De Indonesische kwestie’, 461. 10 Gert Oostindie, Hoogenboom, Ireen and Verwey, Jonathan, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia, 1945–1949: War crimes in Dutch veterans’ egodocuments’, in: War in History Vol.25.2 (2018) 256. 11 Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia’, 256. 12 , ‘Article 8’ in: Rome Statute of the International criminal court (Rome, July 17, 1998). 4 days later in the television program Achter het Nieuws.13 Thereafter, a storm of protest broke out in the Netherlands, by veterans who claimed they had done nothing wrong. Hueting and the broadcaster Vara received many letters after the interview. Some agreed with Hueting, such as volunteer H. Jenezon who stated: “The number of prisoners killed after endless torture is countless... We were not much better than the SS.”14 On the other end of the spectrum were many more angry letters addressed to the Vara and Hueting. Conscript W.A. de Grijs, for example, called Hueting a traitor and noted that Hueting had desecrated the good name of the Dutch internationally.15 Even during the filming of Onze Jongens op Java in 2018, not even half of the interviewed veterans admitted that any excessive violence had occurred. Dick van der Sluis, for example, commented: “No Dutch committed any war- crimes in Rawagedeh. I do not believe any Dutchmen were guilty of the crimes committed.”16 This thesis shall research if more men agree with Dick van der Sluis or if he has little support for his statements. Shortly after the interviews by Hueting, the ministry of Justice of the Netherlands set out to research the excessive violence. The so called “Excessennota”, which was conducted in only three months and led by historian Cees Fasseur. However, only 110 cases of violence were examined, of which only 70 were excessive.17 However, Fasseur himself found, in contrast to Prime-Minister Piet de Jong, that the “Excessennota” was far from complete. More research should have been done according to him.18 A new plan to research the excessive violence in Indonesia was approved by the Dutch House of Representatives on August 14, 2012.19 Thus, after Swiss historian Remý Limpach published his book De Brandende Kampongs van Generaal Spoor in 2016, the House of Representatives replied that more research should be conducted. In their letter to the House of Representatives, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defence and the Minister of Health, and Sport, concluded that the research conducted by Limpach was superior to the Excessennota and hailed its extensive research. The reason behind this was, according to the ministers, that the political landscape in the Netherlands had changed and that the discourse about decolonization had opened up.20

13 NOS ‘Fragment uit het interview met Joop Hueting in 1969’ NOS, November 13, 2018, https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2259173-fragment-uit-het-interview-met-joop-hueting-in-1969.html (consulted on 20-04- 2020). 14 Remy Limpach, De Brandende Kampongs van Generaal Spoor (Amsterdam: Boom Uitgevers 2016) 5. 15 Limpach, De Brandende Kampongs, 8. 16 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Bert Hofman on 18:15 (aired on 05-12-2019). 17 De excessennota, introduced by Jan Bank (reissued, Den Haag: SDU 1995) 32. 18 Harm Ede Botje, ‘Cees Fasseur pleitte al in 1969 anoniem voor nader onderzoek naar excessen in Indië’ in: Vrij Nederland, March 14, 2016 https://www.vn.nl/onder-pseudoniem-pleitte-cees-fasseur-al-in-1969-voor-onderzoek-naar-excessen-in- indie/ (consulted on 21-04-2020). 19 ‘BRIEF VAN DE MINISTERS VAN BUITENLANDSE ZAKEN EN DEFENSIE’ Parliamentary Paper 26 049, no. 74 (August 12, 2012) 1. 20 Parliamentary Paper 26049, no. 82, 3. 5

Thesis setup This thesis shall discuss the aftermath of the Japanese occupation in Indonesia after World War Two. The years after World War Two were very violent on the archipelago. Why was the post-war period in Indonesia so violent? How are these violent years discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse? Also, why in the aftermath of World War Two, did the Dutch government decide to restore their rule in Indonesia with a force of more than 200,000 men? During these years many soldiers on both sides committed excessive violence. How come these men were capable of doing such horrible things? After the Dutch were forced to leave Indonesia there were years of silence considering the excessive violence committed by the Dutch until Hueting opened-up. Most people, however, were not, and are still not, willing to admit any wrongdoing. Why is that? And what does that do to the public discourse in the Netherlands today? The main question of this thesis is What happened in Indonesia in the aftermath of World War Two and how are these violent years discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse? To answer such questions, this thesis shall be divided into three chapters, each answering one sub-question. Chapter one of this thesis shall discuss the Bersiap-period. The main question for this chapter is: What was the Bersiap-period, what happened and why? Why was the Bersiap period so violent and what happened during the Bersiap? Many survivors of the violence are not alive anymore. Luckily, many have been interviewed about the events that have unfolded. U.S. historian William H. Frederick, for example, has recorded a fair number of testimonies. These testimonies along with many other primary sources such as the Dutch Opsporings Dienst Overlevenden (ODO), which also recorded many testimonies by survivors and secondary works, shall be the prime resource to discuss the Bersiap- period in detail. Frederick finds that not enough research had been done towards periods of colonial violence where the colonized committed various war-crimes. He notes: “To a greater degree than most, Indonesia’s revolution has been romanticized, but in a peculiar fashion: it has been portrayed as being considerably less violent than was actually the case.”21 Chapter two shall discuss the Police-Actions (1947 – 1949) and the excessive violence conducted by both Indonesians and Dutch during these years. The main question of this chapter is: What were the Police-Actions, what happened, and why? Why did the Netherlands, in the aftermath of World War Two, send a force of 220,000 men to reclaim Indonesia? It is, however, not the purpose of this chapter to discuss the entirety of the Police-Actions, but rather the excessive violence committed by Dutch soldiers during the Police-Actions. It shall research what kind of excesses, and how many were committed by Dutch soldiers Also, why were they committed? To research this, this chapter shall use many interviews that were conducted with the men who served in Indonesia. The

21 William H. Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’ in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol 14.3-4 (September – November 2012) 359 – 360. 6

Dutch television-documentary Onze Jongens op Java, for example, let eight Indonesia veterans speak about their years in Indonesia. But also, the research conducted on behalf of the Dutch government, as well as many papers and books by national and international historians and researchers. published his memoires in 1952 about his time in Indonesia. His memoires shall be of great importance for this chapter as well as it shall give a glimpse in his thinking, what moved him to kill so many people? How does he justify this in his book? Chapter three shall discuss the aftermath of the Police-Actions in the Netherlands. The main question of this chapter is: ow were the Bersiap-period and Police-Actions treated in the post-war years in the Netherlands? Shortly after the war, rumour had spread about the excessive violence conducted by the Dutch soldiers. Statements made by conscript Joop Hueting and other soldiers did not make this any better. Therefore, in 1969 in an attempt to bring forward the committed excesses, the “Excessennota” was formulated in which multiple war-crimes were established.22 However some researchers such as German historian Chris Lorenz find it was conducted too hastily and not well- formulated. According to Lorenz the Excessennota should be re-done as it did not conduct any interviews. Likewise, according to Lorenz, the Excessennota did not do justice to the Indonesian victims. For the Dutch government it was a way to close the chapter on the Police-Actions for once and for all without harming the Dutch government and military.23 The Police-Actions are still a topic of debate in the Netherlands and some veterans still refuse to admit that Dutch soldiers did do anything wrong such as volunteer Dick van der Sluis stated.24 Also, how are the events of the Police-Actions discussed in Dutch high school education? Finally, in the conclusion, the events shall be briefly summarized and an answer shall be given to the main question of this thesis.

Methodology and sources This thesis shall consult various primary and secondary sources regarding the Indonesian Independence. Primary sources such as the O.D.O. archives (Opsporingsdienst Overledenen) are a proper way to find survivor testimonies of the Bersiap-period. They give a good insight in what happened during this time, and were conducted right after the Bersiap-period. Parliamentary papers are also great sources for primary research as they let the viewer know how politicians thought about a possible war with the Republic, and also how they responded to the excessive violence committed by their own soldiers. Books and papers by various historians shall be used as secondary material. Well- known historians like Remy Limpach and Gert Oostindie have written various books and papers on the

22 De excessennota. 23 Chris Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering en de universele mensenrechten De casus ‘Rawagedeh’ in: Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis Vol. 128.1 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2015) 115. 24 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Dick van der Sluis on 31:32 (aired on: 05-20-2019). 7 topic of the Indonesian independence. Their works, combined with the various primary sources, will make sure that this thesis shall find an answer to the question What happened in Indonesia in the aftermath of World War Two and how these violent years are being discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse.

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Bersiap “I saw to my left and right piles of human body parts that the murderous crowd had severed from the bodies of their innocent victims, and lying scattered among them were many wounded people. Here in this room, I witnessed a drama that was more than just horrible, it has no equal in history.”25 - Survivor of the Simpang Club massacre (October 15, 1945, , Eastern-Java).

What was the Bersiap-period, what happened and why? This chapter shall discuss the Bersiap-period in Indonesia. The chapter shall be chronologically discussed, starting with the growing nationalist sentiment, followed by the proclamation of independence, interventions by British forces, the Bersiap- period itself and lastly the . The aim of this chapter shall be to dissect the Bersiap-period, to understand why this period was so violent and how the British and Dutch responded to this violence.

Growing nationalist sentiment According to Dutch historian Herman Bussemaker it is often assumed that the Indonesian Revolution started with the proclamation of Indonesian independence by Sukarno. In his book Bersiap!, Bussemaker addresses that it actually had roots dating back to the early twentieth century, when the country was still under Dutch colonial rule.26 Dutch education in the Dutch East Indies at that time, meant that more and more Indonesians could follow education. The first Indonesian emancipation movement emerged from their circles in 1908: the Boedi Oetomo, or "The clean pursuit". Koesno Sosrodihardjo, later known as Sukarno, founded in 1927 the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia (PNI) which strived for independence from the Netherlands. Sukarno and the PNI mobilized tens of thousands of Indonesians. Another important factor for the growing nationalism was the youth congress in Batavia in 1928. The youth swore an oath that implied that Indonesia would be one nation - from Sabang to Merauke - with one language, one flag and one national anthem. Sukarno was therefore banned to Flores and later the Benkoelen Islands. When in early March 1942 Japanese troops conquered the Dutch East Indies, they were received with open arms and Sukarno was brought back from his banishment. Among the Indonesians there had long been no support for the Dutch colonial administration.27 In his extensive work on the Kingdom of the Netherlands during World War II, Dutch historian and founder of the RIOD (Dutch national institute for war documentation), Lou de Jong notes that the Japanese government was reluctant to give Indonesians independence. But in order to give the

25 Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’, 364. 26 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 27 – 31. 27 Idem, 22. 9 nationalists input regarding the administration, the Poesat Tenaga Rakjat, Centre of the People's Power, abbreviated Poetera, was founded. This centre would assist the Japanese in mobilizing the people and was led by Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta, Kihadjar Dewantara and Mas Mansoer; all four seasoned nationalists. Sukarno immediately revealed that he wanted a free and independent Indonesian state.28 The Japanese government had hoped to use the Poetera to defend Java, but was not successful due to opposition from the Indonesians who still demanded independence. In early 1945, Sukarno began to turn more and more against Japan, which led to an uprising. Japan began to see that it could no longer ignore Indonesia's desire for an independent state. On March 1, 1945, the Japanese , Moichiro Yamamoto, instructed the Central Advisory Council, of which Sukarno was chairman, in Java to investigate Indonesian independence under Japanese supervision. It was there that Sukarno formulated his famous speech in which he formulated the foundations of the Indonesian state: the Pancasila.29 On July 17, 1945, the Japanese cabinet approved the proposal to grant independence to the Dutch East Indies. This independence would then take effect on September 7, 1945. On August 7, 1945, the commander of the 7th Area Army, Lt. Gen. Itagaki, publicly announced in Singapore that a committee to prepare for Indonesia's independence would be established. This became the Panitia Persiapan Kemerdakaan Indonesia (PPKI). The most important figures of this committee were Sukarno, Mohammed Hatta and . This proclamation was broadcast throughout the Indonesian archipelago. The commission would be officially installed on August 18.30 The plan seemed to continue until the second nuclear bomb fell on August 14 and the Japanese government capitulated a day later.31 It was of importance for the events after the Japanese surrender that Japan had trained an in order to defend Java and Sumatra from any Allied assaults. Unlike the Dutch, the Japanese authorities believed that the mobilization and militarization of Indonesian society could greatly contribute to the defence of the archipelago and thus to the Japanese victory. Especially Java, with its 60,000,000 citizens, was for the Japanese a great source of manpower. The Hei-Ho troops who were recruited from former KNIL (Royal Dutch Indies Army), were auxiliary soldiers, wore Japanese army uniforms and were trained by the Japanese in warfare. The Sukarela Tentera Pembela Tanah Air (PETA) was a voluntary army and was likewise trained in combat and had received weapons training by the Japanese. Also, the Hizbullah (army of Allah) consisted of some 50,000 soldiers. Furthermore, there was also a militarized youth organization, the Seinendan, with strong similarities to the German Hitler Jugend. In total, the Japanese trained some 37,000 PETA, 25,000 Hei-Ho and over 670,000

28 Lou de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog , part 11B-II (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff 1986) 895. 29 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, 11B-II, 922. 30 John Smail, in the early revolution, 1945 – 1946 (New York: Cornell University Press 1964) 19. 31 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 42. 10

Seindendan. 32 At the end of the war, the nationalists had a militarily anti-Western oriented army that was not eager to wait until the Dutch returned. August 15 was not only the day on which Japan finally capitulated, but also the day in which the Allies in Potsdam decided that the Dutch East Indies would subsequently fall under the (SEAC), which was led by the British Lord Mountbatten.33 The British, who had been tasked with the security of Dutch Indonesia after the Japanese surrender, had mainly fought a European war and had little troops to spare in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The troops they did have in the area were mostly spread out over their own colonies and subjects. In light of all this, Japanese troops were now responsible for the safety and welfare of everybody on the islands, until British troops would relieve them. However, the first British landings in Batavia and Surabaya would come six weeks later.34

The proclamation News of the Japanese surrender came too early for Sukarno and Hatta, according to Dutch historian Wim van den Doel.35 The outlined path towards independence suddenly seemed impassable. The day before, Sjahrir had unsuccessfully urged Hatta to declare Indonesian independence as the Allies would not participate in a Japanese production of Indonesian independence. Both Sukarno and Hatta, however, had decided to stick to the idea that the PPKI was the body to achieve independence. However, a day later, the facts had overtaken the two leaders. Now that Japan had capitulated, there could no longer be an orderly transfer of power.36 In the early morning of August 16, both Sukarno and Hatta were lifted from their beds by an angry mob of pemuda’s (youth) which held them captive throughout the day. Meanwhile, Japanese Admiral Maeda stated that Japanese troops would not act against any proclamation of Indonesian independence, as he noticed that the ambiance in the streets was grim and many of troops could possibly die by the hands of angry Indonesians. With this in mind, Sukarno and Hatta eventually wrote their proclamation of independence in the night of August 17. In the morning Sukarno stood on his balcony and stated: “We, the people of Indonesia, hereby declare Indonesia's independence. Cases concerning the transfer of power will take place in an orderly manner and as soon as possible.” The red and white Indonesian flag was hoisted and the ‘Indonesia Raya’ was sung.37 News of the proclamation of independence filtered out of Jakarta only slowly, according to

32 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 28 – 30. 33 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, 11C, 476. 34 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 74. 35 Idem, 76. 36 Idem. 37 Benedict Anderson, Java in time of revolution. Occupation and resistance 1944 – 1946 (New York: Cornell University Press) 80 – 84. 11

Colin Brown, Australian professor of Asian Studies at Flinders University. Except for some of the better- informed urban groups, for some time at least it was treated with caution as people sought to weigh up just what it might mean. But once news did sink in, it provoked a variety of reactions. In Bukittinggi, Sumatra, the centre of the Japanese administration, locals took the initiative to wave the Red and White flag and scrawled nationalist slogans on public buildings and distributed pamphlets explaining the meaning of the proclamation of independence.38 The Indonesians stood, according to Bussemaker, on the moral high-ground towards the Allies because they could rely on the Atlantic Charter of August 14, 1941, which was the basis for justifying the war against Germany, Italy and Japan. Article three of the Charter clearly states: “Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”39 In the Indonesian press, the news about the Charter had already led to critical questions towards the Dutch East Indies government, even before the Japanese attack. However, the Dutch stated that this right of self-determination did not apply to internal situations such as in the Dutch East Indies, but to nations occupied by totalitarian powers. This denial of self-government by the Dutch caused many Indonesians to join any form of rebellion against their colonizers.40 A major problem that emerged on August 17, 1945, was the dissolution of the PETA, Hei-Ho, and all other paramilitary groups. The members had to hand in their weapons and were send home. The purpose of this was to make it difficult for the Republic to form an army. On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of men walked around with military training, but without leadership. The idea of revolution among these groups grew every day. Sukarno, Hatta and Sjahrir agreed that it would be better if the Republic had its own power system but did not want to oppose the Allies at the same time. Therefore, on August 22, the Badan Keamanan Rakjat (public security organization), or BKR, was established. This was organized at a local level and virtually all former PETA, Hei-Ho and other militarily trained youths joined as well as many former KNIL-soldiers. The BKR was on paper just a security apparatus to keep the order in the Republic. In reality it was a well-trained Republican army consisting of hundreds of thousands of men.41 The idea of a revolution grew by the day in Indonesia now that the Dutch were gone. The British would not land for another few weeks and many Japanese officials had declared not to act against any form of rebellion. After the Japanese capitulation, Sukarno and Hatta had initially thought

38 Colin Brown, A short . The unlikely nation? (Crow’s Nest: Allen and Unwin 2003) 161. 39 ‘The Atlantic Charter' Declaration of Principles issued by the President of the and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom’ in: NATO (14 August 1941) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_16912.htm (consulted: 12- 05-2020). 40 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 327. 41 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 78. 12 mainly about how best to sell the Republic to the Allies, but it was now clear that the Republic should strengthen its authority in society as soon as possible. To this end, Sukarno and Hatta entered into an agreement on August 30 with the aristocratic administrative elite of Java and Madura, who had been one of the most important organs with which the Dutch had maintained their colonial authority before the war. As a sign of their confidence, they ensured that three prominent members were appointed governors of the provinces of West, Central and . Furthermore, on September 5, all Indonesian vice-residents were appointed resident to replace their former Japanese superiors.42 Finally, the Soesuhoehan of and the Sultan of also declared their loyalty to the Republic. All the rulers of had thus joined the revolution.43

English-Dutch relations and intervention The enlargement of his command area did not come as a complete surprise to Mountbatten, but it did increase his problems. It meant an increase of his command area by 50% and a doubling of the population to 128,000,000, of whom 65,000,000 lived in Java.44 Batavia, Indonesia's main city, was not included in Mountbatten's list of the most important points to occupy in Asia. Singapore, Hong Kong, Saigon and Bangkok were all preferred over the Indonesian archipelago.45 While Bangkok received the help of 26,684 British soldiers and over 2350 vehicles, including tanks, and Saigon 25,748 men and 2400 vehicles in early September 1945, Indonesia received far less. British commander in Saigon, D.D. Gracey, worked actively together with the French, which resulted in relative peace throughout 1945 and 1946. British commander in Batavia Christison, on the other hand, acted, according to Bussemaker, rather clumsy. Of the British 23rd Infantry Division, only two brigades were planned for the occupation of Batavia at the end of September, and only one brigade for Surabaya at the end of October.46 Upon entering Batavia General Christison declared that he would request Republican leaders to assist him in the performance of his duties. Dutch protests at the British government came to nothing. The British government wanted to avoid any form of violence in the Dutch East Indies. At the time of liberation, approximately 150,000 Dutch were in the Japanese camps in Indonesia.47 However, because the British did not want to be involved in the battle between the Republicans and the Dutch, they also did not allow the Dutch troops, who had been on their way to the Dutch East Indies since October 1945, to immediately travel to Java. They had to go ashore in Malacca, where they stayed until March 1946.48

42 Anderson, Java in time of revolution., 88 – 91. 43 Idem, 115. 44 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 73. 45 Idem, 74. 46 Idem, 75. 47 Cornelis Smit, Dekolonisatie van Indonesië (Groningen: H.D. Tjeenk Willink 1976) 12. 48 Smit, Dekolonisatie van Indonesië, 13. 13

Dutch authorities were halted in bringing soldiers to Indonesia, apart from the KNIL, and would not be able to land in the archipelago to restore their order; they had to abide to British rules. British goals were limited: restoring peace and order in crucial urban areas, disarming and repatriating Japanese troops and evacuating the European internees. The Dutch, on the other hand, wanted to pacify the archipelago. They resented the idea that the British were negotiating with Sukarno and Hatta, who they had persecuted before the war, according to historian and leading researcher at the NIOD, Peter Romijn.49 According to Romijn, as soon as the European war ended, Dutch authorities were already recruiting volunteers in order to “free” Indonesia. “Recruitment of a new army, however, was in 1945 one of the first concerns of the transitional government that came to power after the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi rule. Such an army had to be built from scratch”, according to Romijn.50 The defeat of 1942 had brought a huge blow to the international prestige of the Netherlands. “Therefore, a return to power could only be credible if it included an impressive display of power.”, Romijn notes. In regaining their full control over Indonesia, the Netherlands was fully dependent on their Allies. “This dependence revived old fears that these allies were conspiring to exert more control in the East Indies, or even that they were scheming to end the Dutch colonial relationship.”, according to Romijn. In total, the Dutch Home-Army produced eighteen battalions of volunteers as well as marines who were prepared to fight until all enemies were dead.51 Prince Bernhard would be the Commander-in-Chief and many of the battalion had been respectable resistance members during the war. During their training, many volunteers also had to guard imprisoned Dutch members of the Waffen-SS. However, the guards subjected the inmates to many forms of abuse. One report notes how the 14th Regiment of Assault Guards from the South, then under the command of Bep van Kooten, would shoot randomly at prison barracks, killing at least 40 helpless inmates. A parliamentary committee confirmed the killings and also condemned them. However, the men were already well underway to Indonesia by then. The prosecuting of the men in question was waived “for the benefit of higher interest”.52 Many Dutch were prone to be trigger-happy, having survived the Second World War and seeing the occupation of Indonesia as an extension of the war. Indonesians were thus seen as the same enemies the Germans had been between 1940 and 1945.53 Indonesians were thus not the only ones to be prone to commit crimes, as shall be discussed in later chapters.

49 Peter Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’: Dutch war volunteers entering the Indonesian war of independence, 1945 –1946’ in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol.14.3/4 (November 2012) 325. 50 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 320. 51 Idem, 321. 52 Parlementaire enquête regeringsbeleid Londen, Vol. 5B, annex 153 (: Staatsdrukkerij 1954), 427 –432. 53 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 322. 14

When the first Dutch volunteers finally arrived in Java and Sumatra in March 1946, they discovered the grim reality of the Indonesian revolution. Lieutenant-General Simon Spoor had in July 1945 proclaimed in a pamphlet: “We do not advance to declare war on this country, but to restore peace. You do not come as a conqueror, but as a liberator!”, in order to recruit as many men as possible.54 However, the men did not receive the welcome as liberators they expected. Also, the fighting between the British and Republicans had left the British realizing that it would take too much from them fully secure the archipelago. The heaviest fighting was in Surabaya in November 1945. Eventually British fighters were overwhelmed by the sizeable force of a seemingly endless Indonesian mob. Because of the , it was decided by British Lord Mountbatten that no more British lives should be lost and withdrew the last of his troops eventually in May 1946. Moreover, most of the British soldiers were of Indian descent. itself was also in a lot of decolonial turmoil and it was feared that the spark of rebellion would be ignited when the Indian soldiers would understand they were fighting in an anti-colonial war. The Dutch troops that had finally landed in and around the archipelago were on their own from now on.55

“Be ready” At the beginning of September 1945, much of public life, as well as government, had passed into the hands of the Republic. At the end of September, it became clear to the Indonesians that they would not be involved as parties to the Allied negotiations. Just before the arrival of the British troops on September 29, the nationalists tried to attract as much power as possible and to take over as many weapons as possible from the Japanese. With the arrival of the British, a violent period started in Java and Sumatra, also known as the Bersiap (Be ready).56 Australian professor and expert on Asian history, Robert Cribb, notes how, from an Indonesian perspective, the Bersiap was a bottom-up revolution. Resistance to the return of the Dutch pre-war regime came mainly from the youth, the pemudas, and was widely spread over almost all classes of the population. The revolutionary potential consisted mainly of roughly two million militarized youths. Non-Indonesian groups were the victims in particular. This includes Indo-Europeans and Chinese, who according to Cribb, were arrested and prosecuted. Cribb refers to this process as an ethnic cleansing,

54 Johannes Andries de Visser, Dagboek Indië, Belevenissen uit mijn diensttijd als oorlogsvrijwilliger. Het dagelijks bijgehouden dagboek van een Zeeuwse boerenzoon tijdens de politionele actie in Indië 1945 – 1948 (Almere: van de berg Uitgeverij 2013) 29. 55 Brown, A short history of Indonesia., 163. 56 Elly Touwen-Bouwsma and Groen, Petra, ‘Van Banzai tot Bersiap’ in Elly Touwen-Bousma (eds.), Van Banzai tot Bersiap. De afwikkeling van de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Nederlands-Indië (Den Haag, SDU 1996) 18. 15 or even a ‘brief genocide’.57 However, according to Dutch Indonesia expert Remco Raben, the diversity of the mass violence makes it impossible to classify it as genocide, because the extreme violence in Indonesia resists such labelling in terms of system, size and quantity, as it was not clearly aimed at one specific ethnic group or social class.58 However, Raben does not completely avoid the term 'genocide'. Raben concludes that the violence contains "strong genocidal overtones". This also applied to the violence committed by the Dutch troops.59 East Java was, according to Frederick, arguably the revolution’s most violent region, and is the most fully documented. Many of the Bersiap killings in East Java were bound up with the detention of Dutch and Eurasians by pro-Republican forces, official and otherwise, in the city of Surabaya during October 1945.60 Many Dutch and Eurasians who had been imprisoned during the Japanese occupation emerged from their captivity two or three weeks after the hostilities ended. The first of these groups reached Surabaya on September 6th. A sense of outrage and a need to take revenge on their former colonizers heightened in many localities. According to Frederick: “The immediate result was the famous flag incident of 19 September, in which a prominent Eurasian leader was killed by Indonesian youths over the flying of the Dutch flag, an event that heightened Republicans’ view of Eurasians as hostile to the Indonesian independence movement.”61 Tensions grew rapidly as news of an Allied landing spread, it was widely believed that the Allies would try to establish the control of the Netherlands Indies Civil Administration (NICA).62 Furthermore, at the very end of September, Indonesians in Surabaya seized many Japanese firearms, supported by the BKR. Lastly, in the days after the collapse of Japanese forces, many Japanese were imprisoned themselves. The BKR and PRI (Pemuda Republik Indonesia), youth wing, who guarded them discovered a thirst for violence against Japanese soldiers amongst their own ranks. Frederick notes about this: “In a memorable incident that began at the PRI’s new headquarters (…) a mob executed Japanese prisoners and forced PRI and government leaders to lick their blood from the executioner’s sword. This was the beginning of the PRI’s very complicated entanglement with mass sentiment and violence.”63 The Bersiap on Java and Sumatra, however, differed greatly. The reason behind this was mainly how the Japanese reacted to the sudden surge in nationalist tendencies.

57 Robert Cribb, Jakarta in the Indonesian Revolution 1945 – 1949 (London: Thesis London University Press 1984) 22 – 23.; Robert Cribb, ‘The brief genocide of Eurasians in Indonesia, 1945/46’, in: Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008) 430. 58 Remco Raben, ‘On genocidal mass violence in colonial Indonesia’ in: Journal of Genocide Research vol.14:3-4 (September, 24, 2012) 492. 59 Raben, ‘On genocidal mass violence’, 499. 60 Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’, 361. 61 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 199. 62 Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’, 362. 63 Idem, 363. 16

Java On Java, the Japanese 16th Army worked closely with the Indonesians, who received military instructions and training from them. In the first weeks after the Japanese capitulation, the Japanese in Java strictly adhered to the Allies' command to ensure peace and order. If they had wanted, the Japanese would have been fully able to suppress the young republic and arrest its leaders by the means of power available to them. However, that order was not given by the English. Because the English troops were long overdue, Japanese troops began interning themselves from September 15, 1945, and concentrated the heavy weapons in arsenals.64 The turning point came with the press conference of the British General Christison on September 29, 1945, that the British would disarm the Japanese.65 The interpretation given by the Japanese headquarters in this was that the Japanese were no longer responsible for maintaining order and peace, but that this responsibility would be shared in cooperation with the Indonesian civil authorities. As a result, weapons were allowed to be distributed to police units. The conditions that Indonesian units had to meet in order to qualify for arms distribution were left to the local commanders. However, things went wrong here. In Banjoemas, and Yogyakarta, firearms were freely distributed by the involved Japanese battalion commanders. In Surabaya, , Surakarta and Besuki this happened after the threatened action of Indonesian battle groups. In some situations, a show was performed to save the Japanese honour, but in other situations the Japanese did fight back. In Bandoeng and , the local Japanese commanders cracked down on Indonesian battle groups and took back power. On October 5, 1945, the headquarters in Batavia issued an order stopping further transfer of weapons. However, it was already too late then. More than half of the Japanese weapons in Central and East Java were captured by the nationalists.66 With the coming of English troops on September 15, 1945 in Surabaya and Batavia, and the return of many Dutch and other Eurasians from their internment camps, tensions grew.67 The British, however, landed with not enough troops to actually bring peace to Java. Dutch colonial administrator Huib van Mook, who arrived on October 2nd, wrote a personal letter to a friend of his in stating: “The situation we have found here is beyond imagination. (…) The English have landed with only 1000 men and do not have the means to face a single conflict. It took a long time for the number to rise to 5,000 troops.” Van Mook continues: “Today I finally received a promise from General Christison that he has taken over the inner part of Batavia. Every night, rampok (killing) parties took

64 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 331 65 Henri Baudet, ‘The Dutch Retreat from Empire’ in: Bromley, John Selwyn, Kossman, Ernst Heinrich (Eds.), Britain and the Netherlands in Europe and Asia Papers delivered to the Third Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference (London: Palgrave Macmillan 1968) 215. 66 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 332. 67 Idem, 105. 17 place and Japanese, Indonesians and Indo-Europeans who are in our service are killed”.68 When on October 13th a boycott was issued against Europeans by the Republic and many Eurasians were unable to buy food, Javanese pemuda’s took actions against all Eurasians who dared to go to the streets. As van der Doel notes, out of the blue many Europeans and Chinese were picked up from the streets by angry mobs and were lynched. Their bodies would then be found in a river sometime later.69 “The feeling of being handed over to an unhinged, unruly gang, driving the streets in overloaded vehicles armed with all kinds of battle and firearms was nerve-racking”, as one witness recalls.70 Especially vulnerable were women and girls, most of whom were not only beaten, but also severely raped before being murdered.71 Chinese were also targeted as the only other group besides Europeans. The reason behind this was that they were still trading with the Dutch. Although Chinese had settled in the Archipelago long before Europeans arrived in the sixteenth century, Indonesian nationalist lore associated them with colonialism. Colonial policy in the Netherlands Indies both utilized and distinguished the Chinese, allowing them a favoured status, according to professor in Southeast Asian Studies at Cornell University, Mary Somers Heidhues.72 Indonesians who were seen as collaborating with the Dutch, such as Ambonese, Timorese and Menadonese, were also targeted as many of them had served, or were still serving, in the KNIL. On November 18th, for example, a family of Ambonese were shot and murdered in Batavia by Indonesian policemen while on their way to a church service because some men in their family served for the KNIL. The KNIL, in retaliation, murdered all policemen in the police building.73 Many of the Bersiap-killings in East Java coincided with the detention of Dutch and Eurasians by pro-Republican forces, official and otherwise, in the city of Surabaya during October 1945, according to Frederick.74 Killings in Surabaya connected in one way or another to the PRI, they were numerous and spread over a period of several weeks. Killings that occurred under direct supervision of top PRI leaders at PRI headquarters on the grounds of the Simpang Club, appear to have involved the greatest number of victims and to have been the most brutal. They took place between 15 and 17 October 1945, but continued on a reduced scale for some time afterwards. On October 15th (known as Bloody Monday) there was an organized effort all over Surabaya to arrest all Europeans as well as Ambonese, Timorese and other “collaborating” Indonesians. They were brought to the Bubutang prisons or the

68 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, ‘Parlementaire Enquêtecommissie Regeringsbeleid 1940-1945, nummer toegang 2.02.27’, inventory number: 8B-I (1984) 680. 69 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 90. 70 Idem. 71 Idem. 72 Mary Somers Heidhues, ‘Anti-Chinese violence in Java during the Indonesian Revolution, 1945 – 49’ in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol.14.3/4 (November 2012) 382. 73 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 91. 74 Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’ 361. 18

Simpang Club (a former white’s-only organization). At the club, prisoners were told to strip down after which they were beaten, raped and sometimes they got “NICA” painted on their bodies. Afterwards they were held in small rooms until they were called to “talk to some PRI officials”. A few survivors reported that they had been allowed to go to the bathroom where they saw bloody body parts scattered on the floor, or dead bodies hung from the ceiling. Other victims were beheaded and their bodies then turned over to young children who cut the bodies into pieces. Survivor Joanes Trouerbach recalls in a report published by the Opsporingsdienst Overledenen, which is now in possession of the NIOD: “On the 15th of October, me and my brother were arrested at around 16:00. (…) When we arrived at the club, I saw the bodies of two young men lying not far from me bathing in their own blood. Their bodies were cut in such a way it was impossible to identify them.”75 Leonore Sinsu-Andries, who was arrested because she had a Dutch flag at home, recalls from the Simpang Club: “Those who were to be executed had to lie flat on their stomach and with their head around ten centimetres in the air. They would then be decapitated. Anyone who dared to look was also executed.” Sinsu-Andries continues: “I was allowed to enter the bathroom. It was there that I saw dozens of dead bodies piled up.”76 On the mass-executions around the city of Tegal in middle-Java in October 1945 miss A.J. Pritrarioa stated that her husband, together with the gentlemen Havelaar and Kraaienhout, were summary executed by a mob pemuda.77 Melanie Koster, too, recalls mass execution around Tegal. Koster states in her ODO report: “A gang of extremists entered the sugar factory stating that they had to bring all men to the prison. The men were shot and piled up in mass graves somewhere in the vicinity of the factory.”78 According to Indonesian eyewitnesses, many of the victims were killed not as a result of the general fighting but later in scenes of grisly torture in which the mouths of surviving women were reportedly cut open and stuffed with the severed genitals of British–Indian soldiers, and more than a dozen youths paraded through the street with the heads of Dutch or Eurasian women and British–Indian soldiers impaled on bamboo spears.79 The first murders in West-Java occurred around Tjidengkamp, near Batavia, where many Europeans were interned for their own safety. On October 12, a twenty-year-old man was pulled from his bicycle. A nearby British soldier was alerted, but decided not to do anything due to the British Hands-off policy. His answer was: "I had no orders!" Sometime later, the victim was found dead and

75 NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust- en Genocidestudies, Indische Collectie, ‘Opsporingsdienst Overledenen’, Archive 376 Simpangclub Semarang, October 1945, statement No. 431/X/ODO (Surabaya: October 8, 1947) 1. 76 NIOD, ‘ODO’, Archive 376 Simpangclub Semarang, October 1945, statement No. 605/X/ODO ( Surabaya: November 27, 1947) 1. 77 NIOD, ‘ODO’, Archive 885, Tegal, Soerabaja en vermoorde Chinezen te Pasoeroean, statement No. 910/D.D/ODO (Surabaya: January 12, 1948) 1. 78 NIOD, ‘ODO’, Archive 885, Tegal, Soerabaja en vermoorde Chinezen te Pasoeroean, statement No. Unknown (Surabaya: May 10, 1947) 2. 79 Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’ 365. 19 severely maimed.80 In the following two months, many Eurasian women and children were murdered in Batavia. They were often defenceless because their men were still trapped in Japanese internment camps. The victims were sometimes severely maimed or even cut to pieces and thrown into the Antjol- Canal, wells and ditches. Sometimes there were bodies on the street early in the morning.81 Witness W.H.M. Colson remembers the discovery of six mass graves in and around Batavia, often with heavily mutilated bodies. Especially girls and young women were severely hurt before being killed. Witness H.E. Termeulen, in turn, remembers that bodies of women and children drifted daily in the Tjiliwoeng River. He had personally seen a European man floating, as well as two naked Indo girls nailed to doors.82 A lot of Chinese, too, lost their lives around Batavia, according to Bussemaker. In December 1945, already, there were reports of around 500 missing Chinese. Bussemaker estimates that in Batavia alone, more than 2000 Bersiap-killings had taken place until March 1946.83 The situation was very different in the West-Javanese city of Bandung from that of Batavia where pemuda’s controlled the streets. The Japanese in Bandung had been attacked by a mob of pemuda in early October. The Japanese invited Bandung BKR-leader Soehari to explain himself why Japanese troops were targeted, and imprisoned him. Later he was driven around in a Japanese tank calling all pemuda not to attack any Japanese, Indo-Europeans or Europeans. All BKR-offices in Bandung had been taken over by Japanese soldiers by this time. Every Indonesian was checked when met by Japanese officials and Japanese made sure to imprison every Indonesian if they had a suspicion of being related to the BKR. Unlike in Eastern-Java and Middle-Java, the Japanese kept their weapons and ammunition in Western-Java. The consequence of this was that pemuda’s had to stick to bamboo- spears, machetes and other knives or swords. Because of this, no more than 1500 Japanese were able to keep the order for the biggest part of Western Java, with the exception of Batavia.84 The situation deteriorated with coming of British troops on October 17th and the take-over of command from the Japanese who had been able to keep the peace. In 1945, the city had about 437,000 inhabitants, 40,000 of them Chinese and 380,000 Indonesian. The British reached a truce with the Republican commanders of Bandung on March 24th, 1946. Republican troops were to leave the city and none would be imprisoned by the British army. However, as the Republicans left, they torched the city. They had learned the “scorched-earth tactic” from the Dutch in 1942 when Japan invaded Java. More than 600 buildings in the city went up in flames, most of these were Chinese owned.85

80 Win Rinzema-Admiraal, Java, het laatste front (Zutphen: Walburg Pers 2000) 140. 81 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV), ‘Verminkte stoffelijk overschot van een Indo-Europese vrouw in het Antjol-kanaal te Batavia’, archive 14021. (October 1945) Digital photo: https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/911387 82 Bussemaker, 107 – 109. 83 Idem, 110. 84 Idem, 130. 85 Heidhues, ‘Anti-Chinese violence in Java’, 385. 20

Sumatra The idea of freedom in Sumatra, too, was great. Aceh and the highlands have traditionally always been freedom-loving, even before the war. However, much more than in Java, the nationalists in Sumatra lacked military power.86 The Japanese 25th army that occupied Sumatra also pursued a purification policy without concession towards the Indonesians. The Bersiap-period in Sumatra was therefore less grim than in Java. Moreover, the British commander of the English forces, General Chambers, was much more willing to supplement his scarce troop strength with armed Japanese units. The latter also adhered strictly to the order to maintain order and peace. So, the Japanese did not intern themselves on Sumatra, but remained armed. This also means that much less blood has flowed on Sumatra than on Java.87 In the PPKI only three representatives were from Sumatra. One of them, Mohammed Amir, returned to Sumatra on August 28, 1945, to the city of where he tried to get the KSI (Komitee Nasional Indonesia) off the ground. However, most of the people he tried to persuade refused his offers.88 More successful was Soegondo Kartopradjo. He used his pemuda-network to organize a rally on September 30th in which thousands of participants from all over Sumatra came forward to plead their fealty. It was decided to establish KNI bureaus and to form battle groups everywhere. The red and white flag appeared on all government buildings on 4 October. On October 8, it was announced that Sumatra considered itself part of the Republik Indonesia. In support of this, a mass demonstration was held in Medan on October 9, 1945. Demonstrations also took place in Padan and .89 The strong Japanese presence, could not prevent that any killings would take place on Sumatra. The British 6th South-Wales Borderers battalion landed in Belawan, North-Sumatra, and took over control of the island from the Japanese who had successfully suppressed any uprising. However, the British landed with only 800 men, and so, were not even able to fully occupy Medan, the biggest city in the area. Furthermore, they disarmed the police force which was allied to the Japanese troops, and not the pemuda. The direct consequence of this was that on October 17th, 1945, pemudas stormed a hotel in Pematang-Siantar which housed numerous Dutch and other Europeans and set it on fire. The Danish owner, his wife, their daughter and four Dutchmen lost their lives in the flames.90 In November, the Bersiap also spilled over to Medan, and Europeans outside the protected areas were no longer sure of their lives. The Dutch commander on the spot, Carel Brondgeest, reported the murder of several Europeans to his superiors in Batavia. Bussemaker writes of an ethnic cleansing like the ones

86 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 332. 87 Idem. 88 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, 11C, 568 – 569. 89 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 290. 90 Fokke van Dijk and van Oudenhoven, Bert, Noord Sumatra in oorlogstijd. Oorspronkelijke dagboeken uit interneringskampen chronologisch samengevoegd [Dl. 14] (Makkum: Stichting Noord Sumatra Documentatie 2001) 204 – 205. 21 that had also taken place in Java, but the English did nothing.91 It was solely because of the Japanese on Sumatra that the Bersiap did not grow as big as it did on Java. Until December 31st, 1945, did the British note twenty pemuda attacks with a total of 35 dead.92 1946 was a year of relative peace for the Europeans on the island. However, with the coming of more British troops a rumour had spread that the sultans of Eastern-Sumatra and Aceh wanted to consolidate with the British and become a part of British Malakka. Pemudas burned down their palaces on March 3th, 1946, destructing the old structures of power on Sumatra, paving the way for a of Indonesia.93

Allied war crimes Not just the Indonesians committed various war crimes, likewise did the British, Japanese and Dutch troops. Swiss historian and author of the ground-breaking book: The burning kampongs of General Spoor notes that it is internationally not well known that the British were involved in massive violence because men like Mountbatten wanted to uphold the idea that the British were generous helpers in need.94 According to Limpach, British troops contributed to the escalation of violence through theft, arson and violence against the population. British troops, for example, bombed and burned down the entire Western-Javanese town of Bekasi on November 23th, 1945, after 24 British troops in the area had been killed by pemudas. All inhabitants that still remained in the area were killed after the bombing and burning of the town.95 Extreme violence committed by British troops became routine, according to Limpach. Especially the bombing of entire towns became common practice. The West-Javanese town of Tjibadak, too, was burned to the ground after pemuda’s had killed some 50 British troops in the vicinity of the town. Bombings on Javanese towns as a form of retaliation were performed by the RAF until the British left the scene in March 1946.96 On Sumatra the British performed punitive expeditions instead of bombings. For example: The Royal Garhwal Rifles’ A- Company was dispatched after British Major Anderson was murdered in the city of Padang and another Major was shot in a nearby town. The entire town was burned to the ground and its inhabitants killed.97 Dutch troops, too, committed many crimes during their time in Indonesia. The best example of this is Pesing on Eastern-Java. On April 15th, 1946, the Dutch Zeeland Battalion was advancing on the village of Pesing. By noon, a force of 250 Dutch soldiers had occupied and purged the village. Most of the male population had been taken captive. A Dutch whistle-blower, however, revealed that the

91 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 295. 92 Idem. 93 Idem, 297. 94 Limpach, De Brandende Kampongs, 225. 95 idem, 227. 96 Idem, 231. 97 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 232. 22

Dutch troops had tortured and killed nearly all captives without even knowing which were Republican forces and which were not.98 Romijn asked the right questions when researching this case: Does this Does this background of indiscipline and trigger-happiness indicate that the war volunteers were prone to transfer a culture of violence from the liberated Netherlands to the Far East?99 As it shall turn out in the next chapter, this was only just the beginning Dutch brutality in the Indies. Lastly, the Japanese, too, committed several war crimes. On December 13th, 1945, for example, Japanese officials were captured and murdered near Medan, Sumatra, immediately Japanese soldiers took revenge by encircling the town of Tebingtinggi and killing between 2,000 and 5,000 Indonesians. To further deter any Indonesian attacks, Japanese soldiers impaled dozens of Indonesians' heads on stilts along the main street.100 In Semarang Japanese troops retaliated the killings of Japanese troops as well. In Bandung, Japanese authorities banned the gathering of more than three Indonesians. If four or more Indonesians came together and were caught, the fourth was killed on the spot. When Indonesians were caught with red-and-white pins, they were stabbed in their cheeks, or had to swallow them, according to Limpach.101

Casualties The estimated number of victims from the Bersiap varies greatly. Official records hold that up to 3500 Eurasians lost their lives during the Bersiap period, and a great many more Chinese. De Jong, however, notes that at least 5500 people lost their lives.102 Bussemaker and Cribb find this figure too low as they estimate that between 20,000 and 25,000 people died. Frederick goes even further and suggests that around 35,000 died. This figure does include non-western casualties as well. Furthermore, as Frederick argues, they have taken into account that all the missing people were indeed killed.103 Romijn finds the official records too low as well as he estimates that between 10,000 and 25,000 lives were lost.104 Dutch historian and specialist on Indonesian history, Bert Immerzeel, notes that these figures are probably too high. These figures include, according to Immerzeel, also casualties from the Japanese occupation. Also, at least 10,000 Chinese are among the casualties noted by Bussemaker, Cribb, Frederick and Romijn, according to Immerzeel. Immerzeel notes that the official figure of 3500 to 5500 casualties is probably the right figure.105

98 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 329. 99 Idem, 322. 100 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 149. 101 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 244. 102 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, 12-II, 103 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 342; Cribb, ‘The brief genocide of Eurasians in Indonesia’, 432; Frederick, ‘The killing of Dutch and Eurasians’, 369. 104 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 320. 105 Bert Immerzeel, ‘Bersiap: de werkelijke cijfers’ in: Javapost (published: 07-02-2014) hfttps://javapost.nl/2014/02/07/bersiap-de-werkelijke-cijfers/ (accessed on 02-06-2020). 23

Linggadjati Dutch Major-General Schilling concluded after seven months of trying to pacify the archipelago that it would be impossible for the Dutch to completely restore order and Dutch rule on the archipelago. This reality forced the Dutch government to reflect on what it actually wanted with the Indies, and to what extent the British still wanted to go along with that.106 On November 15th 1946 Dutch representatives Max van Poll, Wim Schemerhorn and Feike de Boer met with Indonesian representative Soetan Sjahrir in the Indonesian village of Linggadjati to discuss Indonesian autonomy.107 It was agreed at the Linggadjati-accords that the Netherlands would recognize the authority of the Indonesian Republic on Java and Sumatra. The Republic would cooperate in a federation of three federal states, which would consist of the Republic, Borneo and Eastern-Indonesia. The sovereignty would lie with the federation. The Netherlands and Indonesia would form a union for their common interests, headed by the Queen of the Netherlands. Dutch companies would be allowed to return to Indonesia and would receive full protection from the Republic.108 The agreement caused a storm of protest in both the Netherlands and the Republic. In Indonesia people wanted to be completely separate from the Netherlands, and in the Netherlands the slogan ‘Indië verloren, rampspoed geboren’ (All is lost when Indonesia is lost) became widely used.109 In the meantime, Republican troops increasingly violated the treaty and little was done for the return of Dutch companies and the protection of Dutch companies. Also, the Netherlands was no longer a colonial power, but reduced to a minor power.110 Although the agreement was ratified by the parliaments of the Netherlands and the Republic in March 1947, there appeared to be no real agreement. The text of the agreement offered room for different interpretations and that space was gratefully used. Both parties had to take their radical supporters into account. In the Republic, the youth movements and the military were satisfied with nothing less than complete independence. In the Netherlands, a large part of the population and its political and military leaders were not ready for accelerated colonial independence. They stuck to the speech Queen Wilhelmina had given to American radio on December 7, 1942, in which Indonesians were eventually promised more independence within the Kingdom. No time limit was indicated in the speech. The conflicts between the Netherlands and the Republic focused on which of the two was responsible for maintaining peace and order in Java and Sumatra during the transition period until the transfer of sovereignty. Both parties claimed this responsibility.111

106 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 27 – 31. 108 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 166 – 169. 108 Bussemaker, Bersiap!, 317 – 322. 109 Van Riessen, ‘De Indonesische kwestie’, 460 – 461. 110 Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia’, 256. 111 Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie (NIMH), Het Nederlandse militaire optreden in Nederlands-Indië/Indonesië 1945-1950. Een bibliografisch overzicht (The Hague, Ede: Elijzen Grafische Producties 2004) 12. 24

While the negotiations continued, the Netherlands had further strengthened its forces. At the end of 1946, in addition to the aforementioned units of the army and the marines, more than 37,000 KNIL soldiers were operational. Furthermore, a voluntary army in the Netherlands was well underway with their training for a possible escalation in Indonesia.112 That is why the Dutch government decided to put things in order through military intervention, this military intervention would be known as the Police-Actions. In two short Police-Actions (Operation Product: July–August 1947 and Operation Kraai: December 1948–January 1949) they managed to attain nominal control, only to find themselves caught in a guerrilla war and counterinsurgency that proved impossible to win. During these Police- Actions, excessive violence on both sides became apparent.113 The events of the Police-Actions shall be discussed in the following chapter.

112 NIMH, Het Nederlandse militaire optreden, 13. 113 Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia’, 256. 25

Police-Actions “The thing is, we had just experienced five years of German occupation. But we came there, and did the same thing to the local population. We did not think about any of it, we just did it. That is really the worst part of it all to be honest.”114 - Dutch conscript Goos Blok on his participation in war crimes during the Police-Actions.

What were the Police-Actions, what happened and why? This chapter shall discuss the Police Actions. The events surrounding the Police Actions shall firstly be discussed chronologically. Subsequently, this chapter will deal with a number of specific moments of excessive violence, the actions of Captain Raymond Westerling will be treated separately. Finally, this chapter will discuss the reasons for the excessive violence during the Police Actions.

Breaking with the Linggadjati-accords The signing of the Linggadjati Agreement hardly brought any solution to the Dutch-Indonesian conflict. In fact, the Dutch government, the commission general, and lieutenant governor Van Mook were still discussing four different ways to end the conflict. First of all, the original Linggadjati Agreement could still be implemented, giving the Republic a semi-sovereign status. However, such a choice required an adjustment in the Netherlands of its own colonial ideology, in which, although Indonesia's right to independence would be recognized, it was also not possible to relinquish the Dutch ‘calling’ in the archipelago. Although it would secure close cooperation between the Netherlands and the Republic, hardly any politicians and policymakers wanted to give up their colonial ideals.115 A second possibility was to convince the Republic again that the Netherlands was the best option to control Indonesia. The Republic would surrender certain privileges as discussed in Linggadjati, but the Netherlands would guarantee the security of the Republic and its inhabitants. However, this second possibility could not be realized since no one in the Republic was willing to cooperate and abide with such an agreement.116 The third alternative was to wage a war in which the entire Republic would be pacified by a Dutch army. However, Van Mook, Schermerhorn and others had repeatedly pointed out the objections of military action. After all, it was uncertain whether economic and industrial installations on the archipelago would fall into Dutch hands unscathed. In addition, maintaining order and peace in the conquered areas would be virtually impossible. The Netherlands simply could not offer the local population much, while nationalism could not be suppressed by violence. Furthermore, military

114 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Goos Blok on 42:11 (aired on 21-11-2019). 115 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 199. 116 Idem. 26 intervention would make it virtually impossible to find a group in the Republic that still wished to cooperate with the Netherlands. Van Mook believed that nothing more than a Pyrrhic-victory could be achieved through military intervention.117 The last alternative was to leave the problem to the United Nations. Van Mook had already suggested this idea at the beginning of 1946 when he saw the future of the Dutch East Indies as gloomy. During the formation of the Beel-cabinet, Minister Kleffens had also suggested referring the matter to the United Nations. If the Netherlands took the initiative itself, it could still retain relatively much influence in the area with the support of Great Britain. 118 However, the Dutch government never took this idea seriously. Giving up the Dutch East Indies was out of the question as van Den Doel notes. Dutch international prestige as a colonial power would degrade to a minor power in the world. Furthermore, Indonesia was, according to many ministers, “ours”.119 Dutch historians and Indonesia experts Marieke Bloembergen and Remco Raben note that the wish to pacify Indonesia and subdue its people came from the ‘ethical policy’ which the Dutch administered in the Dutch-Indies since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. The white man’s burden, which was a theory compiled by British poet Rudyard Kipling in 1899, was an idea which states that it is the burden of the “white civilized man” to civilize those regions which were not. It justified Western imperialism to pacify “uncivilized” parts of the world. In the Dutch case, this was Indonesia. According to this policy, it was the Dutch’s right to control Indonesia in order to bring peace, civilization and democracy. According to Bloembergen and Raben, this was the foremost justification of the Dutch government to reassert Dutch dominion in the Indies.120 Lastly, as Brown notes, while most of the violence was halted after the Linggadjati agreement, clashes between Indonesians and Dutch civilians on the archipelago quickly broke out again. The Dutch government thus saw itself forced to intervene with force.121 The third option was thus seen as the only feasible option to guarantee the safety of Dutch citizens in Indonesia as well as to reassert Dutch power in the world order.

The way to Indonesia On March 6th, 1946, army commander Simon Spoor ordered his chief of staff, Buurman van Vreeden, to find out what actions the Dutch army could successfully carry out in Java. The result was an 'Operations Java Note' of 28 March, in which the chief of staff indicated that for political and economic reasons it was necessary to occupy an important part of in the short term, although from a military point of view a push to the heart of the Republic (Yogyakarta and Surakarta) was preferred.

117 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 200. 118 Pierre Heijboer, De . De strijd om Indië 1945/1949 (Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck 1979) 25. 119 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 200. 120 Marieke Bloembergen and Raben, Remco, ‘Wegen naar het nieuwe Indië, 1890 – 1950’ in: Marieke Bloembergen and Raben, Remco (eds.) Het koloniale beschavingsoffensief. Wegen naar het nieuwe Indië, 1890 – 1950 (Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij 2009) 7 – 8. 121 Brown, A short history of Indonesia., 166. 27

According to the chief of staff, there was no need to count on major Indonesian opposition.122 Army commander Spoor naturally needed sufficient troops to carry out large-scale operations. He could count on KNIL units and Dutch war volunteers, who had signed up in 1944 to liberate the Indies from the Japanese. These volunteers had already been sent in 1946 during the Bersiap period. The arrival of the first division of conscripts, the Seven December Division, in memory of Queen Wilhelmina's speech on December 7, 1942, meant that in 1947 Spoor had three divisions in Java and one in Sumatra. The army on Java and Sumatra was formed by approximately 5000 marines, approximately 44,000 KNIL soldiers and almost 70,000 soldiers of the Royal Dutch Army.123 On the eve of the first battles, they faced a numerically stronger force of the Republic of Indonesia, which was, however, poorly armed and ill-disciplined. The Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI), as the TRI had called itself since June 3, 1947, consisted of approximately 110,000 troops on Java and 64,000 troops on Sumatra. In addition, these troops received the support of approximately 94,000 paramilitaries on Java, and on Sumatra of some 73,000 paramilitaries.124

Police Actions: an overview The Dutch government did not consider these actions as a 'real' war because in its view there was no 'foreign' enemy: it was an 'armed uprising' led by the Indonesians who had collaborated with fascist Japan, and which was subsequently answered by the Netherlands with two 'police actions' to 'restore peace and justice'. From a legal point of view, this denial of a war situation meant that the Hague Conventions (1907) and the Geneva Conventions (1929), did not apply - conventions that also covered the treatment of prisoners of war. That is also the reason why the term “Police-Actions” was given to the situation. The resistance acts of the Indonesians were simply labelled by the Dutch as "terror" and the perpetrators as "criminals".125 This indirectly implied that most soldiers had been given a “carte blanche” to act as they wished in order to restore Dutch control. As this chapter shall explain; a lot of Dutch soldiers acted on this “cart blanche” that they had been given. The first of the two Police Actions, “Operation Product”, was to be officially launched on July 21, 1947. However, the first units of the Dutch forces set out on Sunday evening July 20 to get hold of all kinds of strategic installations, bridges and tunnels.126 One of the main goals of the Dutch advance in West Java was to reach the port of Cheribon from Batavia and Bandoeng, and then advance from there to the Central Javanese towns of Tegal, and Tjilatjap. This would cut Republican

122 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 201. 123 Petra Groen, Marsroutes en dwaalsporen. Het Nederlands militair-strategisch beleid in Indonesië 1945 – 1950 (Leiden: Uitgeverij Jongbloed 1991) 84. 124 Groen, Marsroutes en dwaalsporen, 79. 125 Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering’, 109. 126 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 218. 28 troops from each other. In accordance with General Spoor's “spearhead strategy”, a rapid advance along the main roads was a key to success.127 Politically however, the Netherlands failed to destroy the Republic and may have strengthened its resolve, according to Brown.128 From an international perspective, the Netherlands received little support for Operation Product. The decision to take military action against the Republic, had already landed the Netherlands in the international dock thanks to Australia and India. For example, the Indian Prime Minister Nehru was personally urged by Sjahrir to condemn the Netherlands. Nehru declared on July 24: “The spirit of the new Asia will not tolerate such things (…) No European country has any business to set its army in Asia against the people of Asia. We (the Asians) will not tolerate it!”129 What this meant, among other things, was that KLM, for example, was not allowed to enter Indian airspace and that Dutch companies were boycotted by India.130 For the United States, this meant that it could no longer maintain its wait-and-see attitude towards the conflict in Indonesia. US Secretary of State Marshall therefore decided on July 30 that the best way to prevent United Nations intervention in the conflict was to offer mediation for both sides.131 On August 1, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on the Dutch and Republican governments to end hostilities, to which both parties agreed. In a radio speech, van Mook announced that he would end the fighting on August 4 at midnight. Republican Defence Minister Amir Sharifuddin also announced a ceasefire on the evening of August 4. When Operation Product was formally ended after two weeks on August 4, 1,100 rubber, tea, coffee and cocoa and palm oil companies had been recaptured. The oil fields on Sumatra had also returned to Dutch hands.132 Under United Nations Good Office Committee (GOC) negotiations between the Netherlands and the Republic took place on January 17th on board of the American ship the Renville. In this Renville-Agreement it was agreed to an armistice through the establishment of the “Van Mook-borders”. These borders demarcated the area on Java over which the Netherlands and the Republic had authority. Between the areas, a fifteen- kilometre-wide area would be no man's land which both sides would not cross.133 Meanwhile, the Indonesian Communist Party was growing rapidly in 1947. Tensions between the Republicans and Communist erupted in the Eastern-Javanese city of Madiun in 1948 because of a coup by the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party). A brutal war followed the coup, but within a month, the Communists were defeated and their leaders either killed or arrested. This event in Indonesian

127 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 218. 128 Brown, A short history of Indonesia., 166. 129 Van den Doel, Afscheid van Indië, 225. 130 Idem. 131 Robert McMahon, Colonialism and . The United States and the struggle for Indonesian Independence 1945 – 1949 (New York: Ithaca Press 1981) 182 – 183. 132 Jan Bank, ‘Rubber, rijk, religie: de koloniale trilogie in de Indonesische kwestie 1945-1949’ in: BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review Vol. 96.2 (1981) 28 – 29. 133 Dirk Cornelis Lammert Schoonoord, De Mariniersbrigade 1943-1949 Wording en Inzet in Indonesië (Den Haag: C.R.I - KM 1988) 237 – 239. 29 history is very important as the Republicans had shown that they were capable of suppressing a Communist uprising. This was a key factor for the United States to show their support for the Republicans instead of the Dutch.134 At the end of 1948 Republican forces had dwindled, this had been noticed by the Dutch. Spoor and Prime Minister Beel tried to take advantage of the relative military weakness of the Republican forces. Operation Crow was launched on December 19th 1949. The Republic’s capital of Yogyakarta was captured relatively quick along with Sukarno, Hatta and a great part of the Republican cabinet. Republican forces, however, held out against the technologically superior, but numerically far inferior Dutch troops. Meanwhile, Washington was concerned that the Second Police Action would turn out into a bloody guerrilla war. Also, in light of the emerging Cold War, the U.S. were under the presumption that a next Communist revolt, like the one in Madiun, would soon erupt again. The U.S feared that this time the PKI would succeed, as the Republican cabinet was in shambles. Strong American diplomatic pressure, including the threat of cutting off the post-war assistance via the Marshall Plan, was thus exerted on the Dutch, according to Brown. This pressure, along with the realization that a quick victory over Republican forces was not feasible, made it possible to open up a new dialogue with Republican leadership. A ceasefire came in effect on January 5th 1949. As this chapter shall show later, this did not mean that all the fighting stopped. Drees and Beel eventually travelled to Yogyakarta in , where they started the Round Table Conference. Here it was decided that the Netherlands would formally recognize the Republic of Indonesia.135

Excessive violence The Police Actions caused great controversy in the Netherlands. Not only because some 4500 Dutchmen had died fighting an unnecessary war in Indonesia, but also because between 100,000 and 150,000 Indonesians were killed in sometimes brutal ways.136 Furthermore, just because there was an agreement signed on the Renville discussing a ceasefire, this did not mean that Dutch and Republican forces did not fight. Between September and October 1947 alone, 811 Dutch and 1,792 Indonesian violations of the truce were reported. Dutch soldiers still went on patrols and fought heavily with Republican forces, or as the Dutch called them: “terrorist” forces, between Operation Product and Operation Crow.137 Dutch volunteers were hardly trained or equipped with proper equipment to fight any kind of war in the Indonesian tropics. Conscript Joop Hueting recalled: “Neither our weapons, clothing or

134 Brown, A short history of Indonesia., 167. 135 Idem, 167 – 168. 136 Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia’, 257. 137 Piet Hagen, Koloniale Oorlogen in Indonesië – Vijf eeuwen verzet tegen vreemde overheersing (Amsterdam: De Arbeidspers 2018) 734. 30 training were proper. We were sent to Indonesia without knowing what was to be expected of us.”138 However, Indonesia still felt for most volunteers as a Dutch colony, thus many volunteers like Ad Jansen recalled: “Others lost their lives so that we could be free, now it was my turn to risk my life so that others could be free.”139 However, the reality of guerrilla warfare soon became apparent. Volunteer Pieter Paulusma recalls: “When you find your comrades mutilated and tortured to death, that does something to you. Something snaps inside of you. When you find them like that, you want to take revenge (…) The lust for murder jumps up the moment you see your comrade die.”140 This “lust” for murder by Dutch soldiers became apparent during the two Police-Actions. On a purge by Dutch soldiers on the village of Karanggede on October 13th 1947, for example, Indonesian military journals note: “Two Dutch companies, supported by a tank and three airplanes, attacked the village Karanggede. Many civilians died. Along the route many houses were set on fire along with the mosque. The number of casualties was 83 defenceless civilians (among those killed were two babies).”141 Other Indonesian military journals describe Dutch soldiers coming to the village of Jatirejo on October 28th 1947: “They set alight some of the houses and stole stuff with a worth of approximately 5000 Rp. Furthermore, multiple persons were beat when soldiers entered their houses, which they left empty. At the last moment they also kidnapped a civilian called Murijam”.142 Another incident worth mentioning was the “wedding of blood” near Tjilatjap (central Java). On August 1, 1949, a patrol of 20 Dutch soldiers went in search of a suspect near the Kampong of Tjilatjap. Due to a misunderstanding, when the Dutch Lieutenant Derk Gerrit fired his gun on accident, fourteen men, eleven women and three children were killed at a wedding by Dutch soldiers. The soldiers thought Gerrit had been in trouble and thus fired his gun, and so, they fired on the crowd of wedding guests that were passing by. None of the perpetrators, including Gerrits, were arrested.143 This event in Tjilatjap shows how trigger- happy and undisciplined Dutch soldiers were. Dutch conscripts and volunteers have opened up more and more the last two decades about what happened during the Police-Actions. However, during their time in Indonesia, many soldiers already wrote home to their parents or girlfriends. Ko Zweeres, for example, wrote to his parents: “Whenever a kampong is purged it is common to shoot anyone who runs away. The military success is measured not by the number of dead enemies, but by the number of weapons confiscated.

138 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Joop Hueting on 15:21 (aired on 21-11-2019). 139 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Ad Jansen on 09:15 (aired on 21-11-2019). 140 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Pieter Paulusma on 38:32 (aired on 21-11-2019). 141 Bart Luttikhuis and Harinck, Christiaan, ‘Voorbij het koloniale perspectief Indonesische bronnen en het onderzoek naar de oorlog in Indonesië, 1945-1949’ in: Low Countries Historical Review Vol. 132. (2017) 60. 142 Luttikhuis and Harinck, ‘Voorbij het koloniale perspectief’, 65. 143 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 353 – 355. 31

Among the dead it is always certain that a fair amount of them is an innocent farmer.”144 Conscript soldier Harry Brummans wrote in his diary: “Every three minutes we moved our shellfire fifty meters and this way we set all houses on fire. The Republican soldiers fled, but they ran into our machinegun fire. It must have been hell down there. All people trying to escape were mowed down by machine guns. In spite of everything I thought this was too radical!”145 Conscript soldier Jozef G.M. Elizen, too, recalled in letters how he was present during excessive violence: “The man who was guarding the prisoners told them that they could escape (‘If you want to leave, here is your chance.’). When the prisoners escaped, he shot them.”146 That these kinds of letters eventually were posted is in itself remarkable as volunteer Ad Jansen recalls: “We were not allowed to write about anything negative when writing letters to our parents. So, we were not allowed to write, for example, about fighting Indonesians.”147 The Dutch state effectively tried to keep the public out of the atrocities of war as the support of the war could plummet in the Netherlands if news of the atrocities came out. Another case of extreme violence during the Police Actions took place in the East Javanese city of Malang in January 1949. A total of sixteen Indonesian prisoners were killed here in a premeditated massacre by Dutch soldiers. Colonel H.J. Krönig, who was responsible for security in and around Malang, had been deeply concerned about security in his sector. His task was to defend a mountainous area of 350 km2 with only five poorly equipped and barely armed battalions (2000 men). Since the city was a political and cultural centre, the TNI was constantly trying to bring the city under its control, including through infiltrations.148 At the same time, Krönig received many messages from nearby plantation owners to arrest the terrorists and stop the looting and murders. Limpach emphasizes that Krönig felt that he was in a compulsive position. For this reason, he had sixteen prisoners murdered of whom Krönig claimed to be “resistance leaders”. Krönig believed this would break the morale of the TNI and keep the plantation owners satisfied. However, documents do not show for which offenses the prisoners were arrested. In addition, one of the prisoners was only sixteen years old when he was killed, too young to be an actual “resistance leader”.149 As for the motives of the high-ranking perpetrators, the case of Malang appears to be about military, political and economic duty and the need to protect the surrounding plantations. This is of course a strange motive, since the so-called “resistance leaders” were already in prison and could not do anything from prison. The Dutch army would ultimately have benefited much more from the

144 Een anonieme officier, ‘Een officier uit Djokja schrijft aan zijn vrienden’ De Groene Amsterdammer, February, 26, 1949 https://www.groene.nl/artikel/een-officier-uit-djokja-schrijft-aan-zijn-vrienden (consulted on 17-04-2020). 145 Lisette Schoeren-Brummans, Indië 1947–1948: Een prachtig land in oorlog (Soest: Boekscout 2014) 143, 146–7. 146 Oostindie, Hoogenboom, and Verwey, ‘The decolonization war in Indonesia’, 264. 147 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 2’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Ad Jansen on 14:09 (aired on 28-11-2019). 148 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 345 149 Idem, 346 – 348. 32 prisoners if they had survived. Important information, for example, could have been gleaned from these prisoners. The reckless killing of these men shows that Krönig had no idea what to do with the prisoners and had these sixteen men killed as a kind of sacrifice. As for the soldiers who actually fired the bullets, revenge and a high level of violence turned out to be the reason for killing the prisoners. According to Limpach, the soldiers' oriental and racist views were important reasons for the killing of what they saw as “lesser” Indonesians.150 Rawagede is also a case of extreme Dutch violence towards Indonesians. Early in the morning of December 9, 1947, about 80 to 90 Dutch soldiers attacked the West Javanese kampong Rawagede. The soldiers were looking for the local insurgent leader Lukas Kustario. Kustario, however, had already left the kampong the day before. When the soldiers could not find Kustario, they murdered between 350 to 440 male civilians. The entire male population of the kampong.151 In the 1969 Excessennota, this slaughter is settled in just a few sentences. As the Nota suggests, the purge claimed the lives of "only" 150 men, including 20 prisoners who were executed without trial. How the other 200 – 300 men died; the Nota does not discuss in any case.152 Rawagede had about 200 to 500 inhabitants and was located in the middle of the troubled regency of Krawang, about 70 kilometres east of Jakarta. There were irregular and regular Indonesian forces in the area, including many Hezbollah fighters, who pursued Dutch troops in vain. Due to the increased Dutch presence in the area, the TNI's Jakarta Brigade unleashed a guerrilla war against the Dutch troops as well as many Chinese living in the area and other Europeans. In the Dutch reports of the end of 1947 there is talk of large-scale Indonesian terror. Only 110 Dutch troops were responsible for the peace in the 1000 square kilometre area. The numerous attacks on transports, civilian targets and other pro-Dutch persons and groups made the situation in Krawang very worrisome, according to the Dutch High Command. This situation caused the Netherlands to give permission in early December 1947 to Lieutenant Colonel R. Boer to send small groups of special units and to burn down all the villages that had provided aid to TNI.153 In the end it was decided to use the kampong Rawagede as a deliberate deterrent, as it turned out afterwards. The Republic had already reported on December 24, 1947 to the "Commission of Good Offices" of the United Nations. Anonymous witness statements added to the report showed that Dutch soldiers had also lined up and killed 60 men with machine guns near the station at Rawagede. The same witness had seen twelve more bodies lying in Rawagede, while the military allegedly killed 312 men. These 312 fatalities made up the entire male population of the kampong. This is in stark contrast to the reports drawn up by Dutch troops. For example, in military

150 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 352 – 359. 151 Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering’, 114. 152 De excessennota, 83. 153 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 324 – 325. 33 reports of December 10, a purge is mentioned, but the entire action of December 9 is not. Only a report drawn up by Commander Boer shows that on December 9 a “purge” started against Rawagede. According to Boer, gang members opened fire against the Dutch troops. 150 fighters were killed and eight were taken prisoner, according to Boers rapport.154 Other Indonesian witnesses stated in a TV documentary in 1995 that Dutch troops had executed all boys and men between the ages of 15 and 60. Kustario himself later indicated that he had recovered all the bodies after the 1949 armistice. Kustario had counted 431 bodies, this number almost corresponds to the number that the Imam of Rawagede had mentioned (433). However, this number should be called taken cautious. Out of a population of up to 500, it is unlikely that there were 431 men and only 69 survivors. In addition, there are no indications that Dutch soldiers forced residents of other kampongs in the area to travel to Rawagede and then be killed there. As Limpach rightly notes: "If the Indonesian count is correct, then a large number of insurgents must have been lodged in Rawagede on December 9." However, no indications of this have ever been found. It is therefore more likely that the count of a maximum of 312 victims was correct.155 On Bali many soldiers committed various war crimes as well as Charles Destree, an army conscript who was send to the island in March 1946, recalls from his own experience and has heard from others. Three months before his landing on the island Dutch officers reported, "This once- peaceful island is now being hit by a terror from revolutionary youth, threatening to utterly disrupt the once well-structured Balinese social system." The army reacted inexorably. Hundreds of insurgents were shot, thousands taken prisoner. Anyone who resisted was stabbed, beheaded or set on fire with the house and all. Dutch soldiers reportedly burned down many kampongs and shot anyone who fled, according to Destree.156 From the very first skirmishes, the Dutch army command was divided over the strategy to be followed in Bali. The most senior soldier on the island was a certain Colonel Ter Meulen, who himself had been in German labour camps. He called for an end to the violence because he believed that there were "Nazi practices that the civilized world has been fighting against in recent years." He reported to his superiors that in the first week of April 1946, 52 Balinese had already been killed and many injured. The fatalities included "many insignificant insurgents and even a mother and a child who had no relationship whatsoever to the resistance."157 But Ter Meulen's appeal made little impression on his non-commissioned officers, according to documents that Vrij Nederland Newspaper had in its possession. KNIL captain Van Oldenborgh informed the headquarters in Denpasar that hard

154 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 326. 155 Idem, 331 – 333. 156 Anne-Lot Hoek, ‘Bloedbaden op Bali’ in: Vrij Nederland, November 13, 2013 https://www.vn.nl/bloedbaden-op-bali-2/ (consulted on: 22-05-2020) 157 Hoek, ‘Bloedbaden op Bali’, https://www.vn.nl/bloedbaden-op-bali-2/ (consulted on: 22-5-2020) 34 blows had to be dealt to the enemy, "with all available means". Airplanes were used to bomb entire kampongs. On one day over 100 civilians died from Dutch bombings.158 Conscript Goos Blok arrived in Bali in December 1947, a year and a half after Destrée. He had learned Malay on the boat. He was therefore assigned to the intelligence service and ended up at the Mengwi outpost, where he was surrounded by KNIL troops of the Gadja Merah brigade. On his first day, he saw colleagues working a Balinese with a water hose. “It was pushed in the man's throat and filled with water.”, Blok recalls. Blok quickly joined in too. He beat up prisoners, put them in the blazing sun, and used the power of a field telephone to torture them. “I put the electrodes of the phone in their hand and then I turned to generate electricity. And then they were shaking.” In the outpost where Blok sat, there was an almost friendly atmosphere among themselves despite the atrocities.159 Siebe Lijftogt, an administrative officer on Bali knew of the many atrocities going on Bali. He wrote to his friend and professor in international law at Leiden University Frederik Mari baron van Asbeck on June 1st, 1947: “It is estimated that some 10,000 people have been illegally detained. Thousands of them are treated inhumanely. They are put in the blazing sun for hours and are hung with their toes just on the ground.”160 An estimated 100 people were killed on Bali everyday according to Lijftogt, of which 40% were innocent.

Westerling Special attention in this chapter shall be given to Captain Raymond Westerling, nicknamed: the Turk, for his Turkish birthplace of . On November 13, 1946, it was decided to send a small elite unit of the Special Forces Depot (DST) to South Celebes, specializing in counter-guerrilla warfare. Westerling was already known to General Engels for his actions on Medan, where he established an indigenous police force of about 200 men and thereby seized and kept Medan. Westerling successfully built an intelligence network in Medan, took actions against gang leaders and built and trained a specialist unit. Thus, Westerling was chosen to lead the operation. Westerling was also not an ordinary Dutch soldier because of his Turkish background, as he had lived his first years in Turkey. Because of this he was very well informed about Islam, a normal phenomenon for him. Westerling was very adventurous, had an exceptionally good talent for languages, was quite fearless and could act accordingly. Both General Spoor and General Engels were convinced that Westerling was the man to complete the mission. It was also decided to grant Westerling the right to carry out summary executions when he deemed this necessary.161 From December 11th 1946 until March 4th 1947,

158 Hoek, ‘Bloedbaden op Bali’, https://www.vn.nl/bloedbaden-op-bali-2/ (consulted on: 22-05-2020) 159 Idem. 160 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 383. 161 Bauke Geersing, Een markante periode uit de geschiedenis van Nederlands-Indië. Kapitein Raymond Westerling en de Zuid-Celebes Affaire (1946 – 1947) Mythe en Werkelijkheid (Soesterberg: Uitgeverij Aspekt 2019) 68. 35

Westerling pacified the island of and successfully stopped most of the rebel activity on the island.162 The reputation of Westerling is to this day still heavily disputed, as many historians have condemned him for his actions on the southern part of the Celebes island. Dutch historian Willem IJzereef, for example, notes that the “Westerling-method”, which was the independent execution of summary justice, was the most extreme and harsh way of acting, not covered by any legal framework. The State of War, in force since December 11th 1946 offered in four sections of the residence of soldiers the opportunity to fight their opponents vigorously. Summary law was not one of those possibilities.163 Raben, too, notes on Westerling: “Westerling, employed a terror tactic by raiding villages, picking out suspected men and executing them on the spot after a sham trial.”164 Other historians, such as Bauke Geersing, found that Westerling did not in fact commit any excessive violence, but that he acted in a way as every soldier should behave on foreign soil. He was the right man in the right place on the right time, according to Geersing.165 Westerling himself notes in his memoirs: “As the world joyfully celebrated the end of hostilities, I fell into a gloomy mood. My desire for adventure was not satisfied. The hostilities had ended, peace had come, and the world would return to its quiet, dull, and mundane routine.”166 He openly admitted his thirst for adventure, he wanted war. Even before his time on Sulawesi he was known for his handling of “Republican terrorists”, as he named his opponents. On Southern-Sumatra he had a bet with an English commander that he would purge a nearby unnamed kampong for a bottle of whiskey. This is a bet that he won. At night he entered the kampong with two DST-soldiers, killed all the guards and spiked the head of the rebel leader on a pole as a deterrent for other rebels nearby. Westerling shows no remorse in this passage of his memoirs, not even mentioning that this was a war crime.167 About his approach of deterrence by violence Westerling notes: “The execution of one criminal could save hundreds of innocent lives. It was on this principle of protection for the little man but unrelenting justice for the real criminals that I took up my task of pacifying Celebes.”168 Westerling goes on and on in his memoirs how all the locals celebrated whenever they saw him. Big feasts were thrown whenever he killed local crime lords and purged kampongs. Westerling states that he had arrested detainees tried by the local population. "Does this man deserve death?" he asked. If the answer was "yes", he immediately executed the arrestee, if the answer was "no", he was

162 Willem IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire. Kapitein Westerling en de standrechtelijke executies (Dieren: De Bataafsche Leeuw 1984) 138 163 IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire, 104. 164 Raben, ‘On genocidal mass violence’, 494. 165 Geersing, Een markante periode uit de geschiedenis van Nederlands-Indië, 70. 166 Raymond Paul Pierre Westerling, Mijn Memoires. Kapt. Westerling (Antwerp: Uitgeverij P. Vink 1952) 39. 167 Westerling, Mijn Memoires, 86. 168 Idem, 130. 36 imprisoned.169 He continues: “The only war crime I have committed was to confiscate contraband and distribute it to my native troops. I was like an East Indian Robin Hood (…) I had brought peace to the natives. I had stopped the streams of blood shed by the guerrillas. I had done this by hitting only the guilty and not the innocent civilians.” Westerling finally closes with the statement: “I left literally thousands of friends on Celebes.”170 Not once in his whole memoire does he show any kind of remorse or contemplation about his actions. Everything he did was, according to him, justified as he only killed criminals, not innocent civilians. However, witness statements and records suggest that Westerling knowingly and willingly executed prisoners or people of who it was not known if they had any affiliation at all with any form rebellion. During the first military actions of Westerling and the DST around the kampong Batoea, Westerling ordered his troops to shoot anyone found with weapons, including stabbing weapons, without trial. Including the ordinary population who had such weapons to protect themselves against thieves. Westerling also held his first action on the evening of December 10, a day before the actions were to take effect. In principle, Westerling acted illegally.171 However, the operational orders for this action did not say a word about the execution of opponents or the exercise of summary justice, which did happen. The records of the first actions of the DST have also been preserved. In it is mentioned by Troop I that one person was killed in an escape attempt en route. Troop II reported that they found seven men in a cemetery with small to medium-sized stabbing weapons, they too were killed. One person was killed during a search and contrary to the operational plan, a purge was conducted among the population of the village. 35 people were executed. Finally, the kampong was set on fire by mortar fire and burned down completely. The report thus described an unannounced purge, but does not explain why the victims were executed. Multiple war crimes are mentioned, but no action was taken against it.172 During the subsequent second, third and fourth action, 81, 81 and 31 people were killed respectively, whereby war crimes such as mutilating suspects were not avoided by Westerling. An eyewitness stated that Westerling, for example, first shot all toes of a suspect before summarily executing him, during the third action when Westerling was looking for the alleged terrorist “Ali Malacca” around .173 Another, an Indonesian named Nico Palar, was able to state at the request of the House of Representatives that Westerling had gathered all the villagers on December

169 Westerling, Mijn Memoires, 140. 170 Idem, 152, 155. 171 IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire, 99. 172 NIMH, ‘Operationele orders no. 1 t/m 4 van commandant reserve-eerste luitenant R.P.P. Westerling inzake acties op Zuid-Celebes inclusief bijbehorende patrouilleverslagen door groepscommandanten, waaronder H. Dolkens, J. Wolff en W. Uittenbogaard 8 - 17 december 1946’ in: De Vries, access number 237, inventory number 540 (The Hague). 173 IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire, 101 – 102. 37

17, during the fourth action, and left them in the blazing sun for hours. After a few hours, he appointed someone to tell him who the rebels were. If he didn't appoint anyone to him, Westerling would kill ten random people and the designated person among them. Out of fear, the man randomly identified ten people who had nothing to do with the uprising, yet they were all killed by Westerling and his men. Even after all ten were dead, Westerling and his men kept shooting.174 KNIL soldier Ton Kelders notes in the Dutch television program Onze Jongens op Java: “Westerling would commit summary executions. His victims would not see a judge, but would be found guilty by him. Afterwards, he would shoot them through their head. I met him once when on patrol, he was a truly terrifying man.”175 The number of casualties is also still heavily debated. While official Indonesian figures suggest that up to 40,000 men, women and children were killed under orders of Westerling, it is quite obvious that this number is way too high. Another report by the authorities of the proclaimed Republic entitled "Massacre in Macassar" of August 1947 mentions 30,000 victims. This number was according to Geersing used as a tool of propaganda.176 IJzereef notes that the DST under direct supervision of Westerling killed 388 Indonesians. Subcommander Vermeulen, who answered directly to Westerling, is known to have killed approximately 1055 Indonesians. However, the total number of casualties caused by the Dutch army and the KNIL is higher. According to IJzereef, this number is 5,182 of which Westerling was also primarily responsible.177 All this is based on official military reports and the findings of the Commission Enthoven, which studied the Southern-Celebes Affair extensively. Geersing, however, does not agree. He notes that Westerling at the most was responsible for the 388 killed Indonesians. However, he finds this number still too high. Geersing notes that a letter from Indonesian Colonel M. Matsir Said, found at the Historical Research of Military Forces at the University of Hasanuddin, to Westerling notes that only 256 casualties were made under supervision of Westerling.178 This letter, however, is just one and no further historical evidence has been found suggesting that Westerling, indeed, only made 256 casualties. As for Westerling himself, he suggests that he is responsible for the deaths of 600 “rebels”, higher than Geersing concludes.179 However, he does make an excellent point which IJzereef missed or ignored. “I was not the only officer on Celebes, thus I cannot be held accountable for all the killings made by others.”180 He continues: “I had only executed criminals, but no one had died needlessly or wrongfully because of me.”181 This statement is

174 IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire, 103 – 104. 175 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Ton Kelders on 20:27 (aired on 05-12-2019). 176 Geersing, Een markante periode uit de geschiedenis van Nederlands-Indië, 135. 177 IJzereef, De Zuid-Celebes Affaire, 140. 178 Geersing, Een markante periode uit de geschiedenis van Nederlands-Indië, 137. 179 Westerling, Mijn Memoires, 157. 180 Idem, 158. 181 Idem, 155. 38 simply not true. Because of his actions, Westerling has become the face of excessive violence during the Police Actions.

Why? Not much is known about why Dutch soldiers committed these excesses. Goos Blok recalled: “I saw a bunch of KNIL-soldiers standing around a prisoner and they were pouring water in his mouth with a hose until he talked.” Interviewer: “Is that not torture?” Blok: “Yes that is torture. You did not learn this; you just did these kinds of things.”182 Several Dutch soldiers identified the Indonesians as a lesser person. This perspective could arguably come from the colonial perspective as Ko Zweeres remarks how some saw the Indonesians as people who climbed in palm-trees and who saw every white person as some sort of half-God.183 It was this Eurocentric colonial view that made many men do the things they did. Many Dutch saw the Indonesian “rebels” as lesser men. This “White man’s burden” type of view was typical for many Europeans who had only heard of the Dutch East Indies in news stories. Indonesia was a Dutch possession; the natives were subjects to the Dutch crown. Therefore, it seemed impossible for some men to just give it away to the Republicans. Dick van der Sluis makes a great remark considering the colonial view some soldiers had, and still have: “We came there to restore order and peace. The TNI fought to get in control of Indonesia, which I did not, and still do not, understand. The Dutch made Indonesia great, not the Indonesians.”184 Likewise, others saw the Republicans as terrorists who endangered innocent people.185 Our great adventure was the title of a book published in 1948, in which an army chaplain described the history of a volunteer battalion from the Province of Zeeland. Father Louis van de Vrande MSC reported in a colloquial and optimistic style on the exploits of the men.186 Romijn notes: “As the title suggests, the author emphasized an encounter with an unknown and exciting world. He celebrated the volunteers’ ‘honest masculine comradeship’ and ‘patriotic dedication’, and honoured their decision to spend ‘the best years of their lives’ in the cause.”187 These statements were certainly in line with the statements made by Westerling who also sought out adventure in the Indies and was quite sad to know that war had ended.188 Westerling, and many other found the war in the Indies a

182 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Goos Blok on 39:11 (aired on 21-11-2019). 183 ‘Een officier uit Djokja schrijft aan zijn vrienden’ https://www.groene.nl/artikel/een-officier-uit-djokja-schrijft-aan-zijn- vrienden 184 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 2’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Dick van der Sluis on 10:47 (aired on 28-11-2019). 185 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 2’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Harm Karsijns on 10:02 (aired on 28-11-2019). 186 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 320. 187 Idem. 188 Westerling, Mijn Memoires, 39. 39 perfect opportunity to find the adventure they so desperately wanted. However, as noted in the first chapter, the volunteers Romijn notes, were trigger happy men who just had survived the war and saw Indonesia as rightfully theirs. The Japanese, and later the “rebels” who tried to grab Indonesia for their own had to be taken down. A military inspector pointed at ‘the bad moral condition of the younger part of the population after five years of war and occupation’ and the impossibility to discipline them in a short stretch of time, also due to a lack of training officers. After all, it is obvious that the tendency among the troops to use violence at their own discretion should not be seen apart from the permanent problem of indiscipline.189 It was this sense of adventure, white supremacy and lack of discipline that, in essence, made soldiers do the things they did. They saw the Indonesians as “rebels” who wanted to take the crown colony of the Netherlands for their own. They saw themselves as the white heroes of the populace that were being assaulted by these barbarian natives. Also, as volunteer Jan Foppen recalls: “When you see your comrades die, you come into this position of rage. You’re able to do terrible things you normally would not do.”190 Other perpetrators of violence often justified their actions by claiming that the Indonesian extremists raped and killed Dutch women.191 It was the identification of the Indonesians as unworthy people, along with the rage of seeing their own friends die in horrible ways that fuelled the excessive violence conducted by many soldiers. This would be in line with French historian Jacques Semelin’s argument on the imaginary. The “othering” of people is, according to Semelin, born out of a mental process, a way of seeing some other being, of stigmatising him, debasing him, and obliterating him, before killing him.192 This mental process usually takes time, according to Semelin, but is accelerated in the process of war.193 This imaginary construct of Indonesians being lesser had already well developed before the war. Others note that they acted out of obedience as conscript Goos Blok notes: “I electrocuted TNI-soldiers. I would do this without thinking about it, I was given orders. You just did it.”194 “Bevel is bevel” (orders are orders) was what many Dutch soldiers commented after the war. It is especially in these words that the compelling influence of the military organization and hierarchy on the actions of its members has gained renown. The phrase translates the military's conception as a 'social machine' in terms of absolute personal submission. According to Dutch sociologists and Indonesia veterans

189 Romijn, ‘Learning on ‘the job’, 322. 190 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Jan Foppen on 11:57 (aired on 05-12-2019). 191 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 382. 192 Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy – The political uses of Massacre and Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press 2007) 9. 193 Semelin, Purify and Destroy, 9. 194 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 1’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Goos Blok on 41:40 (aired on 21-11-2019). 40

Jacob van Doorn and W.J. Hendrix it is that in the basis of this principle, it is said that the soldier converts his orders "automatically" into actions, without setting standards himself or allowing any personal consideration to precede those actions. He has learned that it is enough to do what he is told to do.195 However, it must be noted that to state that one can commit excessive violence because they were told, the perpetrators tried to wash their hands in innocence. In essence, what they state is that it was not their fault that they did what they did, higher ranking officials were to blame. But by taking this into consideration, ultimately General Spoor and General Engels carried the sole responsibility of the actions of Dutch soldiers. Even Westerling, who was granted the right to summary execute by Spoor, should in this regard not be held accountable, he was just following the orders by Spoor of purging Southern Celebes. To understand why and to what extent people blindly obey, U.S. psychologist Stanley Milgram set up an experiment in 1963 in which 40 men between the ages of 20 to 50 years old were given instructions to deal a certain amount of electric voltage to another test-subject. The test-subject who received the “shocks” actually did not receive any shocks, but was working for Milgram. After each shock, the test-subject was to give a sign of intensity and how they felt. However, the voltage would increase after each shock, thus increasing the amount of pain given to the test-subject.196 The first shock would be a light shock and so on until the shock level would reach a deadly level. Out of the 40 participants 26 reached the level of deadly shock, thus blindly following the orders of Milgram and “killing” the test-subject, even after the test-subject would have made clear that they were in a lot of pain. The participants claimed they were following the order of Milgram as he was the person with authority in the experiment. Only five participants stopped at the “intense shock” level and refused to participate any further in the experiment, the remaining nine subjects only stopped at the “severe shock” level, just one level before the deadly level.197 After World War II many Germans stated that they also just followed orders, the most famous was probably Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann claimed to have only followed the orders which led to the destruction of 6,000,000 Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other opponents of the Nazi regime.198 Dutch philosopher and writer Harry Mulisch, present at the trial, described Eichmann as a machine, a person who cannot think for himself and only follows orders. Every nation and every generation know many of these machines, according to Mulisch. He had simply taken an oath and did what was expected of

195 Jacobus van Doorn and Hendrix, W.J., Het Nederlands Indonesisch Conflict. Ontsporing van Geweld (Dieren: De Bataafsche Leeuw 1983) 224. 196 Stanley Milgram, ‘Behavioral Study of Obedience’ in: Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology Vol. 67, No. 4 (1963) 373. 197 Milgram, ‘Behavioral Study of Obedience’, 376. 198 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, ‘Daily News Bulletin’ in: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 20, 1961, 2, http://pdfs.jta.org/1961/1961-02-20_035.pdf?_ga=2.136157873.1050541735.1585141912-1237283996.1585141911. 41 him, regardless of the order.199 The same could be said of the Dutch soldiers who committed various war crimes across the Indonesians archipelago. However, German war criminals were prosecuted for their crimes, while only a small number of Dutch excesses were court-martialled during the war. In total, only 42 soldiers have been convicted of excessive violence. One of them was sentenced to death, the rest imprisoned from two to twelve years. None of the senior officers have been prosecuted. Almost all excesses were covered by the army command.200 As far as the statement “orders are orders” go, it is safe to say that some men indeed felt it was their duty to obey every order. However, feelings of revenge, supremacy, indiscipline and trigger happiness were probably the most substantial factors of excessive violence. Feddy Poeteray, a former KNIL soldier recalled in 2013 that he had his orders from General Spoor and Queen Wilhelmina to protect the colony. Doing so, it was unavoidable that innocent civilians would die, this happens in every war. However, concerning his personal motives for killing innocent people and already captured TNI soldiers, Poeteray commented that vindictiveness played a huge part because his grandmother and aunt had been killed by nationalists during the Bersiap period. On Sumatra he had also seen the heavily maimed bodies comrades after which he said to himself that every perpetrator should be killed.201 Van Doorn and Hendrix therefore rightly conclude that the ‘order is order’ thesis to explain excessive violence is only of very limited significance. The main objection is that it does not explain why excesses occurred, but merely suggests that the higher in rank bore the most blame and passed on the work to the lower in rank who did all the dirty work.202 This dirty work should mostly be admitted to blatant racism, supremacy, vindictiveness and comradeship. Many innocent people, as were most who were killed during the Police-Actions, would just become a number, nothing more than just a statistic in many history books written after the war. The next chapter shall discuss these post war years as most veterans kept silent for many decades and will still argue that they did nothing wrong. Why is it that it took 20 years, until 1969, for Joop Hueting, one of the first whistle blowers among the many veterans to open up about his past? Why did the post war Dutch government cover up so many excesses and why did it take until 2005 for the first representative to make a formal apology for the atrocities committed? That is what chapter three shall discuss.

199 Harry Mulisch, De Zaak 40/61 Een Reportage (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2006) 131 – 134. 200 Hagen, Koloniale Oorlogen in Indonesië, 780. 201 Limpach, De brandende kampongs, 383. 202 Van Doorn and Hendrix, Het Nederlands Indonesisch Conflict., 226. 42

Aftermath “They called us murderers, the people protesting. It is a good thing we did not have any weapons or I would have shot them right there.” 203 - Volunteer Bert Hofman on the people protesting when excessive violence conducted by Dutch soldiers came to light.

How were the Bersiap-period and Police-Actions treated in the post-war years in the Netherlands? The aim of this chapter shall be to discuss how in the post-war years the Bersiap-period and the Police- Actions were treated. What was known of the violence? Were perpetrators eventually tried? And what does the general public know of these years?

Criticism and reconciliation As Dutch historian Paul Bijl points out; a regularly heard complaint about the Netherlands is that the Dutch have forgotten their colonial past, especially the violence committed by the Dutch colonial army.204 Perhaps surprisingly, it is mostly Dutch people themselves who utter this lament. Various historians, journalists, politicians, veterans from the Dutch colonial army, and students looking back on their high-school education have made this claim. In the Dutch public sphere, it also returns at least a few times a year. Speakers, moreover, not only charge the other Dutch with amnesia, but also emphatically include themselves. ‘We have forgotten about our colonial past.’205 The most well-known point in Dutch history where there were doubts about the justice with which the Dutch troops fought was in the 1960s when conscript Joop Hueting mentioned on television that he witnessed some atrocities personally.206 However, the issue of Dutch war crimes already came to light during the conflict in Indonesia.

Early criticism Despite the censorship of the army intelligence service, reports of Dutch atrocities were channelled to the Netherlands. Leftist parties and ecclesiastical organizations were keen on this kind of news.207 Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) minister Ernst Vermeer, for example, notes on March 18th, 1947, how some soldiers had called their lieutenant an “ethical fool” for incarcerating prisoners of war,

203 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 4’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Bert Hofman on 19:27 (aired on 12-12-2019). 204 Paul Bijl, ‘Colonial memory and forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia’ in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol 14.4-3 (September 2012) 441. 205 Bijl, ‘Colonial memory and forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia’, 441. 206 De Volkskrant ‘Dr. Hueting: Oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesië’ in: De Volkskrant, December 19, 1968, 15. 207 Stef Scagliola, Last van de oorlog. De Nederlandse oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesië en hun verwerking (The Hague: Balans publishers 2002) 105. 43 instead of just shooting them.208 The sources used were letters from military personnel, usually anonymous, statements from religious authorities in Indonesia and reports from Indonesian news agencies and other foreign news agencies. Members of parliament called the government to account several times in parliament, but likewise the discussion was not new, according to historian Stef Scagliola. 209 Forty years earlier, the horrors of the had already given rise to critical reflections on Dutch actions. And so, during and after the Police Actions, most leftist ministers criticized the excessive violence. Communist Party member (CPN) and minister Paul de Groot, for example, noted in Parliament on the 25th of October 1948, a few weeks before the start of Operation Crow, how Dutch soldiers acted like Gestapo and how they burned down entire kampongs.210 Henk Gortzak (CPN) noted in 1949 how for many years Dutch colonialism had terrorised Indonesia, how they had brutally brought down any form of uprising and how Dutch soldiers had, again, committed various excesses.211 However, such questions about excesses received little enthusiasm because the fight against the Republic was given the highest priority. Furthermore, whistle-blowers were very anxious about any repercussions. Much information did not get any further than the battalion-commander who would in his turn not notify high-command.212 The only case examined in the 1940’s was the case of Raymond Westerling in Southern-Celebes. It wasn’t until 1954 that the commission van Rij brought out a rapport criticizing the role of Dutch East Indies authorities who had allowed the use of summary executions. However, the report only came to the attention of the Council of Ministers, and the report was not made public. Also, in 1956, parliament rejected a proposal to investigate the events surrounding the Police Actions.213 The first revelations surrounding the Police Actions had to wait until the Hueting Affair.

The Hueting Affair and the Excess Nota In an interview with De Volkskrant in December 1968, Indonesia veteran Joop Hueting had mentioned to the interviewer that some of the soldiers had used excessive violence, even against prisoners.214 On January 17, 1969, Hueting opened up about his time in Indonesia during the VARA program Achter het Nieuws (Behind the news). Three weeks after the interview in de Volkskrant he stated on live-television: “I took part in war-crimes and I have seen them happening (…) These were

208 Ernst Vermeer, ‘Uitzending dienstplichtigen’ in: Handelingen der Tweede Kamer, 39th meeting (March 18, 1947) 1206. 209 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 105. 210 Paul de Groot, ‘Ontwerp-Noodwet Indonesië’ in: Handelingen der Tweede Kamer, 7th meeting (October 25, 1948) 1018. 211 Henk Gortzak, ‘Beraadslaging Regeringsverklaring en aanvullende Regeringsverklaring met betrekking tot Indonesië’ in: Handelingen der Tweede Kamer, 54th meeting (May 17, 1949) 1470. 212 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 106. 213 Idem, 107. 214 ‘Dr. Hueting: Oorlogsmisdaden in Indonesië’ in: De Volkskrant, December 19, 1968, 15. 44 not incidental occasions. It was everyday business. (…) prisoners were summary executed without a fair trial.”215 According to Hueting, violence had occurred on a massive scale during the Police Actions and it was time for those involved to come to terms. The news hit like a bombshell because the Dutch public suddenly came into contact with its own colonial past. The shocked the world in the 1960s and was also strongly criticized in the Netherlands. As Scagliola rightly points out, the Netherlands itself had a kind of Vietnam war, about which little was known to the general public. Hueting's statements shocked veterans. Many negative reactions from veteran unions were voiced in newspapers and on the radio. Many veterans accused Hueting of defamation and stated that such excesses would never have happened. But there were also veterans who were grateful to him because they finally dared to speak openly about their actions and what they had seen.216 An important consequence of the broadcast was that the excessive violence was put back on the political agenda. After a number of follow-up broadcasts, in which other Dutch East Indies veterans also had their say, the then government de Jong was urged to take action. A parliamentary inquiry had to clarify this matter once and for all. On January 21, 1969, Minister Joop de Uyl requested the government to issue a memorandum in the Lower House in which all knowledge of the case would be gathered. After three months, the memorandum was completed and this Memorandum concerning the archival research into data on excesses in Indonesia committed by Dutch soldiers in the period 1945 - 1950, in short the Excess Memorandum (Excessen Nota), was presented to the Lower House on June 3, 1969. 217 The Nota which was conducted in only three months and led by historian Cees Fasseur, however, concluded that "only" 110 recorded cases of assault or murder had been found in the archives.218 Especially the counter-terrorism in South Celebes and the methods of interrogation of the intelligence service had been excesses. Nevertheless, it was believed that on the basis of the sources, no statement could be made about the extent of the violence. Nor would there have been any systematic atrocities. According to the memorandum, the army had behaved correctly.219 Furthermore, it concluded that: “The Government regrets that there have been excesses, but maintains its view that the armed forces as a whole have behaved correctly in Indonesia.”220 However, Fasseur himself found, in contrast to Prime-Minister Piet de Jong, that the “Excessennota” was far from complete. Thus, before the Nota was published, he published an article in Vrij Nederland newspaper under the pseudonym, B. B. van Dongen, stating that a source study is of limited use to the historian.

215 NOS, ‘Fragment uit het interview met Joop Hueting in 1969’ NOS, November 13, 2018, https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/video/2259173-fragment-uit-het-interview-met-joop-hueting-in-1969.html (consulted on 23-11- 2020). 216 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 108. 217 Idem, 109. 218 De excessennota, 32. 219 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 109. 220 De excessennota, 32. 45

More research should have been done according to him.221 Cees Fasseur was right. If one would, for example, study the excessive violence in Rawagedeh in December 1947 in the Nota, one would assume that 150 Indonesians were murdered, of which twenty were executed by KNIL-soldiers, who were mostly of Ambonese or Moluccan origin and that regular Dutch-troops did not do anything wrong.222 This example is, according to Lorenz, all over the Nota. Dutch troops are almost never mentioned, apart from Raymond Westerling because his actions were already well-known to the public.223 Also surprisingly, no one had been interviewed. No veterans such as Captain Westerling, and no Indonesians either, while most of the eyewitnesses were still alive. A further investigation into the actions by questioning eyewitnesses and veterans would have likely created an opportunity for the Nota to truly investigate violence. Eventually, the Nota was only opened for the public in 1995, 26 years after it was first published.224 There was a profound division among the military themselves after the Nota. The majority thought more in terms of conscientious duty and orderly behaviour than of excesses and bad war, but the memories varied widely. The justifying perspective largely coincided with the Indonesian view, in which the only conceivable answer to post-war anarchy and the nationalists had been harsh but just intervention. However, the wide publicity that veterans with conscientious objection and some principled "defectors" like Poncke Princen drew afterwards, also shed a different light on the post-war years and, of course, on the colonial order that had been defended. Since then it was no longer possible to commemorate the 5,000 Dutch soldiers who died without mentioning the multitude of Indonesian victims or discussing the loss of the Indies without questioning the legality and justice of the colonial order.225 When the Dutch government was forced in 1969 by Hueting's television appearances to give some clarity for the Dutch parliament, Prime-Minister Piet de Jong used the elapsed time as an argument not to conduct a criminal investigation and not to prosecute the perpetrators, even though crimes committed between 1945 and 1950 were not yet barred. The reason given was that the distance over time had reduced the chances of a fair trial for the accused. 226 Only the left-wing opposition parties in the Lower House, CPN, PvdA, D66 and PSP insisted on further historical research led by an independent committee. However, the majority of parliament was not in favour of this. The most serious offenses had been punished, the Government said, and many excesses would be linked to the

221 Harm Ede Botje, ‘Cees Fasseur pleitte al in 1969 anoniem voor nader onderzoek naar excessen in Indië’ in: Vrij Nederland, March 14, 2016 https://www.vn.nl/onder-pseudoniem-pleitte-cees-fasseur-al-in-1969-voor-onderzoek-naar- excessen-in-indie/ (consulted on 20-11-2020). 222 De excessennota, 83. 223 Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering’, 114. 224 Idem, 120 225 Gert Oostindie, Postkoloniaal Nederland – vijfenzestig jaar vergeten, herdenken, verdringen (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker 2009) 96. 226 Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering’, 114. 46 equally harsh terror of the Republican soldiers. Clear priority was given to sparing the vulnerable group of former soldiers. When the memorandum was adopted by the House of Representatives on July 3, 1969, this meant the end of the public debate on the matter for the time being.227

1970 – present In 1995 and 2008, the Dutch government once again relied on the distance in time as an argument for the decision not to prosecute when the widows of the men killed in Rawagedeh demanded apologies and a compensation for their losses. It was only in 2011 that the widows received some compensation.228 Because there were only nine widows of Rawagedeh alive in 2011, this first successful settlement cost the state a total of 180,000 Euros (plus the costs of the lawsuit). Lorenz notes on this: “This restoration of historical injustice was therefore very cheap according to any international criterion - which probably explains why the Dutch state did not appeal. Distance in time had already paid off - at least for the Dutch state.”229 That Rawagedeh is even mentioned in the Nota is because the UN interfered with it, according to Hueting in an interview with De Groene Amsterdammer in 2008. “The Nota only contains matters that were court-martialled, publicized or otherwise produced documents in an archive. Because that is what the bill is, the result of an archive investigation. No more.”, according to Hueting.230 Hueting continues: “Nothing that I mentioned is noted in the Nota, none of the war crimes I attended have ever been brought to justice. That was the normal procedure: not reporting anything, because the high-command did not want it.”231 If it was up to Hueting, the Excessennota should be redone, including all the crimes reported. One voice in Dutch debates on the colonial past that usually gains widespread attention is that of the state, embodied by the Dutch queens, prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, and ambassadors in Indonesia. However, these voices regularly expressed denial, explaining away or caused confusion altogether. Dutch historian Vincent Houben notes on the national debate in 1995 on how colonialism should be remembered. Prime Minister Kok at the time, deemed it unnecessary to highlight in retrospect the mistakes and wrong actions of past governments.232 The queen, who visited Indonesia in 1995, was absent from the country’s Independence Day on august 17th. Bijl notes on this that this was not to give the impression that the Dutch government did not recognize December 27,

227 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 110. 228 De Volkskrant, ‘Excuses en schadevergoeding voor nabestaanden bloedbad Rawagedeh’ De Volkskrant, December 05, 2011, https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/excuses-en-schadevergoeding-voor-nabestaanden-bloedbad- rawagede~b80c8bb2/ (consulted: 20-11-2020). 229 Lorenz, ‘De Nederlandse koloniale herinnering’, 122. 230 Joeri Boom, ‘De excessennota moet opnieuw’ De Groene Amsterdammer, December 05, 2008 https://www.groene.nl/artikel/de-excessennota-moet-opnieuw (consulted on 02-12-2020). 231 Boom, ‘De excessennota moet opnieuw’. 232 Vincent Houben, ‘A torn soul: the Dutch public discussion on the colonial past in 1995’ in: Indonesia Vol. 63 (1997) 52. 47

1949 as the true starting point of independent Indonesia. This was a case of explaining away, for it implies that what are now known as the Dutch-Indonesian Wars of the later 1940’s, were at the time correctly called no more than ‘Police Actions’. Finally, Kok, as Bijl notes, nevertheless send congratulations from the Dutch government to Indonesia on the former date—in combination with the absence of the queen: confusion.233 Dutch Minister Bot of Foreign Affairs was in 2005 the first representative of the Netherlands to ever formally apologize when he stated to the Indonesian representative: “In retrospect, it is clear that its large-scale deployment of military force in 1947 put the Netherlands on the wrong side of history.”234 The first ever apology by any Dutch ambassador in Indonesia came in September 2013, 64 years after the Police-Actions.235 Finally on March 10th, 2020, King Willem-Alexander also formally apologized on behalf of the Dutch Crown stating: “It is a good thing that we continue to face up to our past. The past cannot be erased, and will have to be acknowledged by each generation in turn”. He continued: “In line with earlier statements by my government, I would like to express my regret and apologise for excessive violence on the part of the Dutch in those years. I do so in the full realisation that the pain and sorrow of the families affected continue to be felt today.”236 The Dutch House of Representatives approved the plan to conduct a new research into the excessive violence during the Police-Actions on August 14, 2012. MP’s van Bommel (SP), Peters (Groenlinks) and Timmermans (PvdA) had stated that new research was necessary.237 In 2016, after the publishing of De Brandende Kampongs van Generaal Spoor by Limpach, Minister of Foreign Affairs (A.G. Koenders), the Minister of Defence (J.A. Hennis-Plasschaert) and the Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport (M.J. van Rijn), concluded that the research conducted by Limpach was superior to the Excessennota and praised its extensive research. 238 The new research plan notes: “An investigation enables us to better interpret this period, answer questions and apply lessons from the past in current and future policy. The government's involvement in an independent investigation recognizes the social relevance of this subject.” The new plan continues: “The Cabinet realizes that a follow-up investigation may cause pain to the group of East Indies veterans, but considers it important that a further

233 Bijl, ‘Colonial memory and forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia’, 451. 234 ‘BRIEF VAN DE MINISTERS VAN BUITENLANDSE ZAKEN, VAN DEFENSIE EN STAATSSECRETARIS VAN VOLKSGEZONDHEID, WELZIJN EN SPORT’ Parliamentary Paper 26049, no. 82 (December 02, 2016) 2. 235 Trouw, ‘Excuses en erkenning wandaden Indonesië komen op de valreep’ in: Trouw, September 16, 2013, https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/excuses-en-erkenning-wandaden-in-indonesie-komen-op-de- valreep~b23db3d7/?referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F (consulted: 02-12-2020). 236 Statement by King Willem-Alexander at the beginning of the state visit to Indonesia’ Royal House of the Netherlands (10- 03-2020): https://www.royal-house.nl/documents/speeches/2020/03/10/statement-by-king-willem-alexander-at-the- beginning-of-the-state-visit-to-indonesia (accessed: 02-12-2020). 237 ‘BRIEF VAN DE MINISTERS VAN BUITENLANDSE ZAKEN EN DEFENSIE’ Parliamentary Paper 26049, no. 74 (August 12, 2012) 1. 238 Parliamentary Paper 26049, no. 82, 3. 48 investigation also pay attention to the difficult context in which Dutch soldiers had to operate.”239 The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Dutch Institute for Military History (NIMH) and the Royal Dutch Institute for Southeast-Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) are all conducting a full-scale research into the Indonesian struggle for independence and the excessive violence committed during this period. The full research shall be presented in September 2021.240 By conducting this research it seems that the Netherlands is finally coming to terms with its owns past.

Responses by veterans The Dutch soldiers returned to a country that could hardly live with the defeat, according to Oostindie. Because nothing more could be done, the noises surrounding the defeat were silenced and the Netherlands proceeded to the order of the day, the reconstruction of the country. The soldiers looked forward to their arrival home with mixed feelings. People hoped for appreciation, but feared incomprehension. Earlier research shows that in addition to the desire to be home again and to pick up life again, there were many worries and cynicism. Unintentionally, this was fed by military information, which emphasized that the Netherlands was far from recovering from the war and that the transition from 'free life' in Indonesia to civilian life in the Netherlands would not happen automatically. The soldiers, however, were not to be blamed241 It was not until January 17, 1969 that the discussion around the Police Actions started again after the statements made by Hueting.242 The Hueting affair had conflicting consequences. First of all, there was division among the military themselves.243 Hueting recalled in the 2019 multipart Dutch documentary Onze Jongens op Java (Our Boys on Java) that he received various death threats after the Achter het Nieuws episode. Even his children had to be escorted to their schools by police.244 Veterans came together in veteran movements in order to get more recognition. When Lou de Jong, for example, published his extensive research on the Netherlands during the Second World War in 1987 veterans were not happy about the chapters on Indonesia. According to Scagliola, the entire veteran movement was mobilized against de Jong. This resulted in a rewritten version in which terms such as “war crimes” were altered to “excesses”.245

239 Parliamentary Paper 26049, no. 82, 3. 240 NIOD, ‘Onafhankelijkheid, dekolonisatie, geweld en oorlog in Indonesië, 1945-1950’ on: NIOD https://www.niod.nl/nl/projecten/onafhankelijkheid-dekolonisatie-geweld-en-oorlog-indonesi%C3%AB-1945-1950 (consulted on 19-11-2020). 241 Gert Oostindie, Soldaat in Indonesië, 1945 – 1950, Getuigenissen van een oorlog aan de verkeerde kant van de geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Prometheus 2015) 281. 242 Oostindie, Postkoloniaal Nederland, 95. 243 Idem, 96. 244 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Joop Hueting on 34:30 (aired on 05-12-2019). 245 Scagliola, Last van de oorlog, 112. 49

The Hueting affair caused a massive divide between veterans. Most did not agree with the statements made by Hueting as one veteran noted in a letter to the VARA: “This bribed traitor and liar has without any evidence defiled, slandered and insulted many of the best sons of the Netherlands, and thus bashed his own comrades and people. What Hueting refers to is only a single sporadic case as in every war.”246 Others saw it as an opportunity to open up about their time in Indonesia, thus revealing far more excesses than were known before. Limpach notes on this that these conflicting statements illustrate the tension that has dominated the national debate about Dutch mass violence for decades. The problem with these non-official testimonies is that they are difficult to verify and therefore remain controversial due to missing details and context.247 These conflicting views on what happened and what did not happen dominates the debate to this day. When the victims and relatives of the Rawagedeh massacre, for example, received full excuses and a form of compensation from the Dutch government in 2011, many Indonesia veterans and their relatives saw this as an insult as, in their view, nothing had happened. Veteran Dick van der Sluis noted on the Rawagedeh massacre: “No Dutch soldiers committed any war-crimes in Rawagede. I do not believe any Dutchmen were guilty of the crimes committed. The widows of Rawagede only want money! Nothing happened!”248 In the Netherlands after the Second World War, as was the case abroad, a coordinating body for veteran care was not established by the government in the long term. Many veterans of the Dutch East Indies, and KNIL soldiers in particular, faced common problems. The way in which the veterans' organizations have described the "Indonesian question" in their periodicals, has inadvertently contributed to the difficulty of many veterans of the Indies with current views on this issue. As a result, these veterans feel unnecessarily misunderstood. This is partly responsible for the great division among the veteran community.249 For many veterans, commemorating the fallen is more than a tribute to the fallen. For them it means reliving the past, by arguing that many soldiers committed excesses they might question whether the sacrifices they made have made sense always plays a role in this.250 The veterans got their own monument in 1988, in Roermond. It was unveiled by Prince Bernhard, a striking division of tasks after the unveiling of the Indies monument in The Hague by Queen Beatrix a few weeks earlier. A Veterans Platform was set up, and the government started to develop a veteran’s policy.251 In 1990, the Dutch government, through Minister of Defense , apologized to

246 Remy Limpach, ‘Business as usual. Dutch mass violence in the Indonesian War of Independence 1945-1949’, in: Bart Luttikhuis en Dirk Moses red., Colonial Counterinsurgency and Mass Violence, The Dutch Empire in Indonesia (New York: Routledge 2014) 65. 247 Limpach, ‘Business as usual’, 65. 248 Onze Jongens op Java. ‘Aflevering 3’ Directed by Coen Verbraak for BNNVARA: Statement made by Dick van der Sluis on 31:32 (aired on 05-12-2019). 249 Jacobus van Doorn, Gevangen in de tijd Over generaties en hun geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Boom 2002) 100. 250 van Doorn, Gevangen in de tijd, 48 – 49. 251 Oostindie, Postkoloniaal Nederland, 97. 50 the veterans for insufficient understanding and guidance after their return home. An apolitical recognition, according to Oostindie, in which the justification and meaning of war effort were not in dispute.252

Seeking recognition Not just Dutch veterans of the war in Indonesia still seek the recognition they desire. Indonesian KNIL-veterans, of whom many were Moluccan, too, seek recognition. The situation for Moluccans was precarious after the independence of Indonesia. The departure of 12,500 KNIL soldiers with their families in 1951 had become inevitable because they did not want to be demobilized in the Republic, while the Republic demanded that they distance themselves from the ideal of an independent Moluccan republic (RMS). In the end, a Dutch service order was decisive. The choice was dismissal from service in Java, or shipment with immediate family to the Netherlands. The vast majority of these KNIL military chose the second option. Once arrived in the Netherlands, the soldiers were immediately fired from service, to their great indignation.253 Housing in separate residential areas, such as the former camp , and the later residential areas made many Moluccans feel like second-class citizens. Their level of education was low and they barely mastered the . The illusion of a return to, and the independence of, the Moluccas also meant that the chances of many Moluccans in the Netherlands stagnated, for example in the labour market and in education.254 Two decades after their arrival in the Netherlands, the situation for many Moluccans in the Netherlands was downright bad. The deep frustration of many young Moluccans was mainly directed against the Dutch state. Violent occupation of the residence of the Indonesian embassy (1970), the Indonesian consulate (1975), a primary school in Bovensmilde (1977) and the Provinciehuis (1978), as well as the two train hijackings at (1975) and De Punt (1977) were the result of this.255 Integration and pacifying participation became the core concepts of Moluccan policy in The Hague, an approach that would later be central to all minorities. It brought recognition to the Moluccan community. This contributed to the establishment of a Moluccan Historical Museum in Utrecht in 1990 and that many Moluccans found a partner outside their own community.256 Around 1985 there was a shift in emphasis within the Indonesian community in the Netherlands. The second generation of Indonesians who grew up in a free Netherlands became increasingly self-aware. Their better education also made this generation more assertive, according to

252 Oostindie, Postkoloniaal Nederland, 97. 253 Idem, 91. 254 Idem, 93. 255 Idem. 256 Idem. 51

Bussemaker. Partly stimulated by the increased interest in the Police Actions, initiatives such as the National Indies Monument were created.257 Also the trust foundation “the Gesture” was established in 2001 by the Dutch government in collaboration with the Indisch platform, a group defending the rights of Dutch Indonesians. The Gesture was a national trust of 350,000,000 guilders which was used to for the back payments of Indonesians who were either interred by the Japanese in Indonesia or fought in the KNIL, collective projects for Dutch Indonesians and research into legal restoration for Indonesians.258 Also, they needed to have full Dutch citizenship before January 1, 1967, be alive on December 12, 2000 (if they had died after this date, the money would be transferred to relatives), not have collaborated with the Japanese and not have a criminal record in the Netherlands before they could receive any form of compensation.259 To this day many second-generation Indonesians who live in the Netherlands are still not satisfied with what was given to them by the government. To them, such as Jeffry Pondaag, the Dutch government has not done enough to recognize the offers their fathers and mothers have brought. The current study by different Dutch institutions like the NIOD to the Police Actions have not consulted enough Indonesian institutions, according to Pondaag.260 Pondaag, along with Francisca Pattipilohy, thus send an open letter to the Dutch government in November 2017. The open letter raised objections to the investigation. For example, the authors of the letter dispute the independence of the research and blame the three institutes involved for a one-sided approach.261 With Pondaag, the FIN (Federation of Dutch Indonesians), too, states that the research by the NIOD, KITLV and NIMH is too one-sided as not enough Dutch-Indonesian and Indonesian platforms would have been consulted. According to the FIN, the Bersiap-period, for example, is not investigated enough.262 However, it needs to be noted that the Bersiap is one of the main sub-studies of the entire research.263 Furthermore, many Dutch- Indonesian and Indonesian committees have been consulted during the entire project such the Pelita foundation and the Indisch platform foundation.264 It is therefore ungrounded to assume that the

257 Theo Bussemaker, Indisch verdriet. Strijd om erkenning (Amsterdam: Boom publisher 2014) 145. 258 Bussemaker, Indisch verdriet, 210. 259 Staatscourant van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden ‘Uitkeringsregelement individuele uitkeringen Stichting het Gebaar’ in: Staatcourant van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden vol.225 (November 20, 2001) 14. 260 Lara Nuberg, ‘Onderzoek Indië samen met Indonesiërs’ in: De Volkskrant, January 4, 2019, https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/onderzoek-indie-samen-met-indonesiers~bf6ec2e6/ (consulted on 10-12-2020). 261 Jeffry Pondaag and Pattipilohy, Francesca, Bezwaren tegen het Nederlandse onderzoek “Dekolonisatie, geweld en oorlog in Indonesië, 1945-1950” (November 27, 2017) http://historibersama.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Open-brief-27- november-2017.pdf (consulted 10-12-2020). 262 Hans Moll, ‘Moll: kanttekeningen bij het Indië onderzoek’ on: Federatie Indische Nederlanders, October 28, 2020 http://www.federatie-indo.nl/20-10-28/ (consulted: 10-12-2020). 263 ‘Onafhankelijkheid, dekolonisatie, geweld en oorlog in Indonesië, 1945-1950’ NIOD https://www.niod.nl/nl/projecten/onafhankelijkheid-dekolonisatie-geweld-en-oorlog-indonesi%C3%AB-1945-1950 (consulted on 22-11-2020). 264 Ind45-50, ‘Maatschappelijke klankbordgroep’ on: Ind45-50 https://www.ind45-50.org/maatschappelijke- klankbordgroep (consulted: 10-12-2020). 52 entire study will be in fact one-sided and does not include enough Dutch-Indonesians foundations in the Netherlands.

The Police Actions in Dutch high-school education Dutch high-school education comes at three levels: VMBO (the lowest form), HAVO (the middle form) and VWO (the highest form). VMBO students can apply to a secondary vocational education after high school (MBO), HAVO students can apply to a University of Applied Sciences (HBO) and VWO students can go directly to a university (WO). History is a compulsory subject in the lower years of VMBO, HAVO and VWO, and after their third-year history becomes a non-compulsory subject. According to a research conducted by Drs. Marc van de Berkel, commissioned by the Dutch 4 and 5 May committee, is the history of Indonesia, primarily that of the colonial period, rarely mentioned in Dutch high-school history books. If we look at the attention that the teaching materials devote to the theme of the Dutch East Indies, it appears that only 139 pages are devoted to the history of the Dutch East Indies between 1595 and 2016 (4.7% of the total of 2948 pages).265 This concerns the information and workbooks of the methods Werkplaats geschiedenis (2VMBO and 3VMBO), Memo (3VMBO, 4VMBO and 4/5/6VWO) and Sprekend verleden (3HAVO/VWO and 4/5HAVO). This is the focus of the entire colonial history in Indonesia, including the period before 1942. Also, the period 1942-1949 is treated very unilaterally. The Indonesian perspective is completely lacking and Indonesian (and Chinese) victims are hardly ever mentioned. The Bersiap, which was a violent period for many Dutch and other Europeans, is hardly mentioned either.266 The Dutch perspective is also very one-sided. Students do not learn who was responsible on the Dutch side for the decolonization war, let alone who was responsible for excessive violence. At the most, they learn that there was military intervention and that Indonesia eventually became independent in 1949.267 The general picture of the decolonization of Indonesia in the teaching resources studied more or less follows the following chronological lines: After the defeat of Japan in August 1945, Soekarno and Hatta proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia. The Netherlands did not want to give up its relationship with Indonesia and sent soldiers twice. According to most teaching methods, these "Police Actions" were successful in a military sense, but due to international protests, the Netherlands still had to transfer sovereignty to the government of Indonesia in 1949.268 History teachers, however, are aware of the missing of certain dark pages of the Dutch past as one history teacher rightly notes: “The

265 Marc van de Berkel, ‘Welk verhaal telt? De oorlogen in Nederlands Indië / Indonesië 1942 – 1949 in het geschiedsonderwijs’ Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei, march 2017 on: https://www.4en5mei.nl/media/documenten/welkverhaaltelt.pdf (consulted: 22-11-2020) 21 – 22. 266 Raaijmakers, ‘De Indonesische dekolonisatie’, 26. 267 Idem, 27. 268 Van de Berkel, ‘Welk verhaal telt?’, 27 – 30. 53

Indonesian perspective, especially the perspective from below, should be included more in the treatment of such a theme (Indonesian decolonization). Of course, I would like more attention to themes such as the Bersiap period, the guerrilla war in South Celebes in 1946, the repatriation and the issue of New Guinea.”269 Dutch historian, Arie Wilschut, pleads for a more open approach on history education. The discussion about the purpose and relevance of history education is not very old, according to Wilschut. Until the 1960s the aim and content of history education were more or less self-evident.270 In the Explanatory Memorandum to the Primary Education Act of 1857, in which history was generally compulsory in primary schools, it is read that "arousing warm patriotism as part of national education" is the aim of the subject. The law of 1878 states as an explanation: “Only that part of national history that gives the pupil a comprehensible overview of the development of the Dutch State and makes him or her aware of the great deeds of the ancestors was to be educated.”271 “The purpose of history, however, is to build a sense of time, not to learn a correct, let alone any correct division of history”, according to Wilschut.272 However, Wilschut is one of the main editors of the book Orientation on history – basic book for the history teacher which the main history book for history teachers in training in the Netherlands. In Orientation on history, which consists of 516 pages, only 1.5 pages are dedicated to the decolonization war in Indonesia. The book only notes that Dutch soldiers were send to the archipelago because the Netherlands did not want to lose its biggest colony and that TNI soldiers constantly broke treaties with the Netherlands. According to the book, the Netherlands was forced to concede after the U.S. threatened to stop the Marshall aid. Furthermore, the book only notes the number of Dutch casualties, which is 4700 according to the book. There is no mention whatsoever about any Indonesian casualties or excessive violence committed by either Dutch or Indonesian soldiers.273 Wilschut himself is part of the problem. If history teachers aren't taught about the excesses, they can't teach their own students about it either. This ignorance towards the Police Actions can be seen when regular people are asked what they know of the Dutch East Indies. The local news broadcaster in the city of Dordrecht (RTV Dordrecht) asked people on the streets what they knew of the Dutch East Indies, some participants reacted that they knew nothing of the subject because they just did not care. Others only knew of it because of the food the Indonesians brought to the Netherlands. A few did recall that it used to be a colony, of which one participant reacted that his uncle had served in Indonesia, but knew nothing of it. Another

269 Van de Berkel, ‘Welk verhaal telt?’, 28. 270 Arie Wilschut, ‘Historisch besef als onderwijsdoel’ in: Nieuwste tijd (July 2002) 4. 271 Wilschut, ‘Historisch besef als onderwijsdoel’, 4. 272 Idem, 7. 273 Marcel van Riessen, Rovers, Frits and Wilschut, Arie, Oriëntatie op geschiedenis – basisboek voor de vakdocent (Assen: van Gorcum publishers 2011) 460 – 461. 54 participant reacted that he was thought almost nothing about the subject in high-school, which is striking with the remarks made in this chapter. 274 The NOS (Dutch national news casting agency) also asked this question on the streets. Almost no one knew anything about the Dutch East Indies, or the Police Actions. One participant did not even know what the Dutch East Indies were, he thought that it had something to do with India.275 It is a good thing that RTV Dordrecht and especially the NOS give more attention to the subject because while RTV Dordrecht only has 7000 subscribers on Youtube, NOS op 3 has over 313,000 subscribers, most of which are of a younger age. Doing so, they educate people the things they should have learned in high-school. When teaching methods for the subject of history have to describe a "black page" of the national past, it is good to take some historical distance, according to research. Inspired by the German historian Jürgen Kocka, many teachers believe that an important task of history education is to understand contemporary phenomena in their historical context and to gain insight into the development of societies by studying them from the past.276 In this context, this would argue in favour of positioning the decolonization of Indonesia in a broader transnational context of colonization and decolonization, or in a longer line of continuity and discontinuity with regard to Dutch-Indonesian relations.277 Finally, the teaching methods pay little attention to the consequences of military action. Why do so many people with an Indonesian background live in the Netherlands? What will be commemorated on August 15? Why is the war of decolonization still so sensitive in the Netherlands? These are questions that, if dealt with, open up a new discourse. In this way, students learn to ask critical questions and also learn the dark periods of Dutch historiography. These are missed opportunities for a new generation of Dutch people who dare to be critical of Dutch history. In this way you deprive students of the opportunity to better understand contemporary discussions and developments.278

274 RTV Dordrecht, ‘Uw mening met vandaag de vraag: Wat weet u van Nederlands Indië (15 augustus 2013)’, Youtube video, 3:18, August 15, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSNhUxAXOnw 275 NOS op 3, ‘Het eeuwenlange geweld in Nederlands Indië’, Youtube video, 15:04, August 15, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-csY5E6hijU 276 Jürgen Kocka, ‘Gesellschaftliche Funktionen der Geschichtswissenschaft’, in: Willi Oelmüller (red.), Wozu noch Geschichte? (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1977) 24 – 30. 277 Van de Berkel, ‘Welk verhaal telt?’, 33. 278 Raaijmakers, ‘De Indonesische dekolonisatie’ 27. 55

To conclude The 1940s was a bloody decade around the world. But where most of the fighting stopped in 1945, it continued in Indonesia until 1949. After years of struggling to gain independence, the Indonesian independence movement saw a chance to gain control over the archipelago after the Japanese defeat and the Dutch military in shambles after World War Two. In the past three chapters this thesis has sought to find an answer to the question What happened in Indonesia in the aftermath of World War Two and how are these violent years discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse? To answer the main question, each chapter has sought to provide an answer to a sub question. The first chapter sought to answer What was the Bersiap-period, what happened and why? The second chapter sought to provide an answer to the question What were the Police-Actions, what happened and why? Lastly, the third chapter sought to answer the question How the Bersiap-period and Police-Actions were treated in the post-war years in the Netherlands. What was the Bersiap-period, what happened and why? To answer this, one would need to go back in history, since already in the early twentieth century Indonesian emancipation movements had emerged such as Boedi Oetomo and the Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia, led by Soekarno. When Japan was victorious over the Allied forces in Indonesia it was decided that the Japanese were to train Indonesian soldiers such as the Hei-ho, while also giving nationalists input in the administration of the archipelago via the Poetera. When the Japanese were finally defeated, a power-vacuum arose in which the nationalists, supported by the trained Indonesian troops, took power. The Japanese were tasked with the security of the islands, but were only on the island of Sumatra able to solidify their control. On Java, they were unable to keep the peace. British forces, who landed in 1946, were also unable to control the islands. Instead, many young Indonesians turned against European and Chinese civilians. Bloody massacres ensued during the Bersiap-period, as this period has come to be known, such as in the Simpang Club. Historians like Raben mention that this period had strong genocidal overtones, but it was not necessarily a genocide. I agree with this statement as not just one class, group or race was targeted, but rather anyone who was thought to be “against” the nationalists. But it was not just nationalist pemudas who killed innocent people or committed war crimes during this period. As this chapter has shown, Allied soldiers, too, committed various crimes. The bombing of Bekasi by British soldiers, for example, or the Pesing massacre by Dutch troops. Nationalists were fighting for their freedom and in the process killed many innocent civilians. Allied troops were fighting to restore the status-quo, and in the process also killed many innocent civilians. In the end, the civilians were the losing side, Europeans, Chinese and Indonesians alike. Official figures estimate that around 3500 people lost their lives during. The number of casualties is in my opinion not as high as 25,000 as Romijn suggests, but probably around 10,000, this is in line with Immerzeel who rightly

56 notes that many other deaths, which had nothing to do with the violence, were also counted among the dead. What were the Police-Actions, what happened and why? The Linggadjati-accords were meant to secure peace on the islands. However, as this thesis has pointed out, many nationalists defied the accords. In the Netherlands, too, the accords were seen as a sign of weakness and the general consensus was that all would be lost if Indonesia would gain independence. After much consultation, it was decided that Dutch soldiers would secure the archipelago and cleanse it from rampaging pemuda’s. The term “Police-Actions” was coined to avoid the war being seen as a colonial war. At the start of the Police-Actions on July 20th, 1947, the Dutch forces consisted of some 5000 marines, 44,000 KNIL-soldiers and 70,000 Dutch soldiers. They would go up against a much bigger force of some 240,000 TNI soldiers in total. However, as the first action progressed, not much ground was gained. Also, under much pressure from other countries, mostly Australia, India and the U.S.A., it was decided to call the fighting to a halt. At the ensuing Renville-agreement the “van Mook” borders were established which would secure a fifteen-kilometre-wide area that would be no man's land which both sides would not cross. However, many Republican forces still crossed these borders after which fighting between both sides ensued. The military power of the Republicans waned in 1948. General Spoor and Minister Beel noticed this, and decided to make use of the Republican weakness. The second Police Action thus was given green light. Operation Crow started on December 19, 1948, and lasted until January 5th, 1949. In the emerging Cold War, the U.S. had noticed how the Republicans had successfully put down a Communist uprising in Madiun and thus decided to take a stand for the Republicans. By threatening to stop the Marshall-aid for the Netherlands, the Dutch decided to halt their second operation in Indonesia. At the “Round-Table-conference” in Jakarta in August 1949 the Netherlands formally recognized Indonesia as a sovereign state. During the Police-Actions, some 4500 Dutchmen had been killed, while between 100,000 and 150,000 Indonesians had been killed. Excessive violence was committed by both sides. Dutch soldiers were hardly trained but the violence of combat would soon change them. Many soldiers thought that Indonesia was part of the Netherlands, and thus, the nationalists were “terrorists” who had to be put down. The nationalists on the other hand fought for their own independent state. With many of the cruelties of the Bersiap- period in their mind, Dutch soldiers were not keen to follow the rules of engagement by killing many unarmed civilians. The Westerling example is probably the best known, but as this thesis has shown it is a fact that thousands of unarmed alleged nationalists were killed by Dutch soldiers such as at Rawagede. A military inspector pointed at ‘the bad moral condition of the younger part of the population after five years of war and occupation’ and the impossibility to discipline them in a short stretch of

57 time, also due to a lack of training officers. This in combination with a sense of white supremacy and adventure would have been the reason for the crimes committed. Others, such as Goos Blok, noted that they killed out of obedience to their superiors. This however, would be to wash one’s hands in innocence and blame their superiors. As this thesis has shown, the ‘orders are orders’ explanation has been made many times throughout history, the most well-known was Eichmann, and many scientists have tested this excuse. However, as van Doorn and Hendrix rightfully concluded, it is still no explanation as to why the killings occurred. If it is true that soldiers blindly obeyed orders, they still killed and thus the higher in rank should bear the blame, such as Westerling or the highest-ranking Dutch military officers. A mix of both excuses is probably the best explanation. The Freddy Poeteray case highlights perfectly the reasoning to many killings. Poeteray commented on his vindictiveness because his grandmother had been killed during the Bersiap-period. However, he also commented on his order to defend the colony at any cost. To add to this explanation, as Jan Foppen commented: “When you see your comrades die, you come into this position of rage. You’re able to do terrible things you normally would not do.” This is a very solid explanation, nobody is expected to stay the same after seeing you fellow soldiers die, the same counts for TNI soldiers. How were the Bersiap-period and Police-Actions treated in the post-war years in the Netherlands? As this thesis has shown; large-scale amnesia prevailed in the post-war years in the Netherlands. Where many Indonesians celebrated their independence, most Dutch soldiers were just glad to be home. The war was to be forgotten. This was until 1969 when Joop Hueting opened Pandora’s box by stating that many Dutch soldiers had committed war crimes in Indonesia. A storm of protest ensued by many veterans calling Hueting a liar. However, the Dutch government was urged to investigate his statements. The following Excessennota stated that excessive violence indeed had occurred, but only in small numbers. It stated that the army had behaved correctly. Further research was not necessary as most perpetrators had already been punished. Furthermore; the time elapsed was too long to investigate anymore excesses, according to Prime-Minister de Jong. It was not until 2005 when the first ever formal apology was made by any Dutch official, 56 years after the war. A new research, conducted on behalf of the Dutch government, on the Bersiap-period and the Police-Actions is well underway and should be presented by the NIOD, the NIMH and the KITLV in September 2021. The findings in this thesis on the Police-Actions in Dutch high-school education are saddening. In secondary education, less than 5% of the curriculum would be spent on the Dutch East Indies, while more than 10% would be spent on the effects of the Second World War in Europe. The Indonesian perspective is also completely lacking and Indonesian (and Chinese) victims are almost never mentioned. The Bersiap, which was a violent period for many Dutch and other Europeans, is also hardly mentioned. Students benefit from a history lesson that covers multiple perspectives, instead they are not taught to know why Indonesians fought for their freedom.

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What happened in Indonesia in the aftermath of World War Two and how are these violent years discussed in the Dutch postcolonial discourse? As this thesis has shown, it is not an easy task to answer such a question. With the help of both primary sources, such as the O.D.O. archives, letters from soldiers and parliamentary proceedings, and secondary sources such as interviews, books and television programs, this thesis has shown that the 1940s were anything but peaceful in Indonesia. The Bersiap-period sprung from the Japanese defeat and years of Indonesian emancipation movements. The Dutch, desperately to keep their control over the archipelago, tried in two “Police-Actions” to put down the nationalist movements. However, with immense pressure from other nations they finally withdrew their soldiers. The war was not to be discussed in the Netherlands until 1969. The King finally made a formal apology in 2020, after 71 years. As this thesis has shown, much is still not known about the Indonesian struggle for independence. High-schoolers learn almost nothing and most veterans are still glorified as war heroes. It has not been the aim of this thesis to bring down all those who lost their lives in Indonesia. Rather, the aim is to inform that there are no winners or losers in war, no black and white, and that all sides have heroes and villains. As the Dutch had men like Westerling, they also had many men who did not commit any war crime, much like the Indonesians did. However, more research needs to be done as ignorance still prevails on many matters concerning Indonesian independence. This thesis contributes to a broader understanding of the Indonesian struggle for Independence.

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