SOCIETY-HEADLINE: INDONESIA- New war study sparks call for self-reflection

A relief depicting the 1947 Rawagede massacre of Indonesians by Dutch soldiers is displayed in the town of Rawagede in West Java, on Sept. 15, 2011.(AFP/Romeo Gacad)

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While the government has not yet responded to a fresh apology from Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for the “extreme violence” committed by Dutch forces during Indonesia’s national revolution, an Indonesian historian has said it is time for the country to confront its own violence during the period.

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The prime minister made the apology shortly after the publication of an extensive study on the bloody revolutionary period on Thursday, in which a group of mostly Dutch historians argued that the Dutch had committed systemic and extreme violence against Indonesians as they sought to reassert control over their colony after World War II.

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The study, funded by the Dutch government and conducted by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), the Netherlands Institute of Military History (NIMH) and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), challenged the official Dutch stance that, in general, their armed forces had behaved correctly in Indonesia between 1945 and 1949.

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Nur Janti
The Jakarta Post
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Mon, February 21, 2022

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