Beyond the Pale

Front matter

BEYOND

DUTCH EXTREME VIOLENCE IN THE

THE PALE

II Iis

I. INTRODUCTION

1 Background, guiding principles and methodology GERT OOSTINDIE

2 The Netherlands and Indonesia 1945-1949. The political-historical context GERT OOSTINDIE

3 The war in Indonesia 1945-1949. The military-historical context GERT OOSTINDIE AND REMY LIMPACH

Interim conclusions

Il. INTERMEZZO The human dimension. The search for stories about the Indonesian War of Independence

EVELINE BUCHHEIM, FRIDUS STEIJLEN, STEPHANIE WELVAART

III. RESEARCH RESULTS

‘Hatred of foreign elements and their “accomplices”

Extreme violence in the first phase of the Indonesian Revolution (17 August 1945 to 31 March 1946)

ESTHER CAPTAIN AND ONNO SINKE

Revolutionary worlds. Legitimacy, violence and loyalty during the Indonesian War of Independence ROEL FRAKKING AND MARTIJN EICKHOFF

‘Information costs lives. The intelligence war for Indonesia,

1945-1949 REMY LIMPACH

The myth of the ‘Dutch Method’ Heavy weapons in the Indonesian War of Independence AZARJA HARMANNY

The law as a weapon. The actions of the Dutch judiciary during the Indonesian War of Independence ESTHER ZWINKELS

Silence, information and deception in the Indonesian War of Independence REMCO RABEN AND PETER ROMIJN

Silence as a strategy. International visions of the Indonesian War of Independence JEROEN KEMPERMAN

Beyond colonial guilt ranking. Dutch, British and French extreme violence in comparative perspective, 1945-1962

THIJS BROCADES ZAALBERG AND

BART LUTTIKHUIS

405 9 A guilty conscience. The painful processing of the Indonesian War of Independence in the Netherlands GERT OOSTINDIE AND MEINDERT VAN DER KAAIJ

437 IV.CLOSING REMARKS 439 Conclusions 471 V. EPILOGUE

473 Dealing with the legacies of a violent past HILMAR FARID

487 Notes

529 Abbreviations

534 Further reading

s43 Acknowledgements 2 About the authors

s56 Index

I.

Introduction

I.

Background, guiding principles and methodology

GERT OOSTINDIE

Between 1945 and 1949, Indonesia defended its recently declared independence, and the Netherlands waged its last major colonial war.’ Much is now known about this war, but a great deal has also remained unclear or contested. At the end of 2016, the second Rutte cabinet decided to finance a broad-based study — conducted by the KITLV, the NIMH and NIOD — on the Dutch military conduct during this conflict.’ This book presents the conclusions of that study. In this chapter, the background, guiding principles and methodology of the study will be explained.

THE WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

IN THE NETHERLANDS

On 17 August 1945, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta proclaimed the Republic of Indonesia. Their proclamation of independence came two days after the Japanese capitulation, which had brought an end to the Second World War and paved the way for the departure of the Japanese occupation forces from Indonesia. The Japanese occupation, which had lasted three and a half years, had effectively brought an end to the Dutch East Indies in 1942. The Dutch government refused to accept Sukarno and Hatta’s proclamation of

NODLOAGOULNI ʻI

II

I2 independence and initially sought to recolonize the archipelago — that is, to restore its colonial authority. From 1946, Dutch policy was geared towards a process of decolonization under the auspices of the Dutch government. This was made conditional upon a restoration of ‘calm and order’ — or, as a later wording put it, ‘order and peace’ — that had to be enforced by military means. It was for this reason that this process — which from the Dutch perspective was concluded on 27 December 1949 with the transfer of sovereignty — was characterized by not only protracted negotiations, but also bitter warfare. The war took a very unequal toll, as demonstrated by the fatalities documented by the Dutch armed forces: approximately 5,300 deaths on the Dutch side, of which half were the result of accidents or disease, compared to possibly 100,000 soldiers and civilians killed on the Indonesian side as a result of Dutch violence.*

The Dutch authorities justified the war as necessary for restoring calm and order. Hidden behind this justification were economic and geopolitical interests as well as a colonial sense of obligation to help the colony in its development. More specifically, the Republic was portrayed as nothing more than a Japanese fabrication, while the restoration of order was allegedly focused primarily on protecting the European population — and other groups affiliated with the colonial regime — from the revolutionary violence. By contrast, the Indonesian nationalists saw the return of the Dutch military and colonial administration as an act of aggression and an attempt to restore the colonial order. This remains the leading view in Indonesia, a view that comes in many variations. This period is seen by Indonesians as a Dutch attempt to ‘reoccupy’ and ‘recolonize’ the archipelago, and by the same token as the ‘defence of our independence’.

The Dutch government’s standpoint has since evolved from one of justifying its own policy to that of concluding that the Netherlands had stood ‘on the wrong side of history’ during these war years. With this statement, pronounced in 2005 by the then Minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot, the Dutch government ‘generously’ accepted the legitimacy of the proclamation of independence both ‘politically and morally’ reaffirming ‘earlier expressions of regret. In his speech, Minister Bot described the entire history as ‘extremely bitter for everyone involved: for the Indo-Dutch community, for the Dutch soldiers, but first and foremost for the Indonesian population itself? In doing so, he made a statement about the appropriateness — and implicitly also the legitimacy — of the Dutch decision to deploy military resources on a large scale.

Bot was less explicit about the way in which the Dutch military had waged this war, even though he did say that “the separation of Indonesia from the Netherlands took longer and was accompanied by more military violence than was necessary. In 2020 in Indonesia, King Willem-Alexander unequivocally offered excuses for the ‘excessive violence on the part of the Dutch. He did not, however, make clear whether these excesses had been incidental or more structural in nature. The idea that these excesses were ‘merely’ incidents has been questioned for some time. Nonetheless, the government stance formulated in 1969 by Prime Minister Piet de Jong — which states that while regrettable ‘excesses’ did occur, ‘the armed forces as a whole acted correctly in Indonesia’ — to this day remains unrevised.°

The De Jong cabinet made this assessment on the basis of the “Memorandum on excesses’ (Excessennota), a government-commissioned survey of cases of excessive violence documented in the available archives — a survey that was not considered complete even by the government researchers who had worked on it. The memorandum had been written in much haste in reaction to revelations by war veteran Joop Hueting about crimes committed by Dutch soldiers — revelations that had caused considerable public and political commotion. Although new disclosures have since been made on a fairly regular basis and renewed publicity has been given to well-known cases, successive governments have never reconsidered this 1969 stance. Neither did these revelations lead to the prosecution of perpetrators of individual or collective acts of violence generally referred to as ‘excesses’ and ‘excessive violence’. Indeed, in 1971 the government even deliberately pressed for a statute of limitations for war crimes committed by its own armed forces in Indonesia.’ It was not until 2011 that a start was made on offering the victims serious reparations.

In the decades following 1969, the debate in the Netherlands was cursory, with short episodes of publicity in between long periods in which there was little public interest in the matter. One such episode of public attention occurred when the Dutch East Indies sections of Loe de Jong’s scholarly tome Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog [The Kingdom of the Netherlands during the Second World War] was published. De Jong, who was highly critical in his assessment of Dutch political and military policy, only agreed ot to use the term ‘war crimes’ after coming under considerable pressure from veterans of the Indonesian war and their sympathizers. In 1995, Queen Beatrix’s state visit to Indonesia generated a new wave as | of discussions. The visit prompted much publicity, including a startling Tv documentary about Dutch atrocities in Rawagede. Well in advance of the state visit, Lower House Speaker Wim Deetman had called for a debate on the Dutch military action during the war against the Republic of Indonesia. His call fell on deaf ears, however, and once again there was silence. This silence was maintained until the second Balkenende cabinet made the aforementioned statements— through the mouthpiece of Bot — on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the 17th of August, Indonesias proclamation of independence.

The public silence was once again broken in 2011 when a ground-breaking court ruling was issued in response to civil claims over the massacre in Rawagede. The claims were submitted by Liesbeth Zegveld, a lawyer, on behalf of the Committee of Dutch Debts of Honour (Stichting Comité Nederlandse Ereschulden, which goes by the Indonesian acronym KUKB) chaired by Jeffry Pondaag. Although the State had initially invoked the statute of limitations, the district court of The Hague ruled in favour of the claimants, eight surviving relatives. The State subsequently decided to settle with the plaintiffs. The position taken by the State marked a break from the line it had previously taken, which essentially involved turning a blind eye or, when this was no longer possible, delaying or categorically denying the claims. In its response to the court’s verdict, the government openly apologized for several specific cases of extreme violence. From 2013, the State again paid reparations to Indonesian widows. These new claims — several dozen — dealt with the massacre perpetrated by the commandos under Captain Raymond Westerling in South Sulawesi with the support of other soldiers of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger, KNIL) in late 1946 and early 1947. The State established a scheme to deal with similar cases of ‘summary executions. These court cases ran into some snags, however, mostly due to the difficulty of the burden of proof laid upon the claimants so long after the event. Nonetheless, the State was no longer contesting the principle of liability for the crimes committed by Dutch soldiers between 1945 and 1949 in Indonesia. In 2015, the court ruled that this liability could be extended to the cases of the children of unlawfully executed Indonesian men. This ruling was not without consequences: since then, a civil-law arrangement for these children has also come into force. In addition, the KUKB has expanded its lawsuits — with some success — to cover other forms of extreme violence such as torture and rape.

These lawsuits have received much publicity. Moreover, the Dutch media have come forward with new revelations as well as more reporting on familiar cases. Journalists and documentary makers have played an important role in setting the agenda, which in turn has helped to prepare the ground within society for a broader study of this period in Dutch history. The academic world also began to contribute to the public debate on extreme violence in the war against the Republic; barring a few exceptions, this occurred remarkably late, as historian Stef Scagliola has noted.’ In the research and in the public debates, the emphasis has increasingly come to lie on questions regarding the nature and the frequency of — as well as the explanations for — actions that had previously been identified as ‘excesses. More generally, the issue was raised of how to characterize a period that had long been referred to in the Netherlands as a period of ‘police actions, but which was increasingly coming to be called a ‘war.

It was in this context that the KITLV, the NIMH and NIOD made their plea in mid-2012 for a study of the Dutch military action. The first Rutte cabinet refused to finance this study, a decision that the second Rutte cabinet initially upheld, reminding the institutes that they were free to conduct the study using their own resources. At the end of 2016, the government nevertheless indicated that it was willing to finance this research after all, referring to the recently published study De brandende kampongs van generaal Spoor [The Burning Kampongs of General Spoor] and its author Rémy Limpach’s harsh conclusions about the Dutch use of extreme violence” In September 2017, the four-year research programme Independence, Decolonization, Violence and War in Indonesia, 1945-1950 was launched, the main findings and conclusions of which are presented in this book. A series of books on the topics examined under this programme is being published at the same time.

FROM THE PLEA IN 2012

TO THE RESEARCH DESIGN IN 2017

On 19 June 2012, the directors of the KITLV, the NIMH and NIOD wrote a plea published in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant advocating a study of the Dutch military violence in Indonesia.” They argued that the study was necessary given the controversies and emotions evoked by the memories and interpretations of the violence of war — making the case for ‘the will to know’ (facts, insights, explanations) — and steered clear of making moral judgments within the ongoing debates. They maintained that a scholarly oe |

IS analysis would lead to a better understanding of collective and individual conduct. At the same time, the institutes took pains not to create the illusion that such a comprehensive research project, to be conducted together with Indonesian historians, would offer the last word on the matter: “This is, after all, historiography.

While the plea was taken up by the media and the academic world, it gave rise to mixed reactions among Dutch politicians and was thereupon rejected by the government, as mentioned earlier. The three institutes nonetheless turned their plea into an initial research proposal that was sent to the relevant members of government, the chairpersons of the upper and lower houses of parliament and all the political parties represented in parliament." Much of the contents of this first research proposal eventually found its way into the research design for which the second Rutte cabinet awarded funding at the beginning of 2017.”

The 2012 proposal contained four sub-projects, the largest of which was described as an ‘empirical study to establish and analyse the use of force by Dutch troops in the years 1945 to 1950, understood in the broader context of the Indonesian Revolution from the proclamation and bersiap to the transfer of sovereignty and the dissolution of the KNIL. A second project was to investigate ‘whether and how violence subsequently led to investigations by the military, judicial and/or official bodies to establish facts and to interpret events, while a third project was to offer an explanation for the violence at the micro-level and in ‘the broader context of the use of force in post-war decolonization processes in Asia. A final project would address ‘the public response to the Dutch military conduct in the period 1945-1950, both in the Netherlands and in Indonesia. If we compare this first proposal with the research design approved by the government in February 2017 for which funding was obtained, it is clear that while the later design is more elaborate and has a broader scope, the central questions are essentially the same.

After the rejection of funding by the Rutte cabinet in 2012, the three institutes each continued with the research independently while also forming an informal lobby in The Hague. Then, in the first half of 2016, the political tide turned. It was in this context that the three institutes decided to revise and elaborate the 2012 research proposal. This led to an extensive research proposal that was shared with a consultation group of various government ministries. In the meantime, Foreign Minister Affairs Bert Koenders indicated that he wanted to revisit the initial rejection of the 2012 request. The government's reaction to this new research proposal was positive. There were requests to clarify some points, which led to an expansion of the passages about the ‘bersiap period’ and the collaboration with Indonesian scientists, but the content was not changed in any substantial way.

In the ensuing months, the research proposal was further developed. The proposed collaboration with Indonesian colleagues took shape in a separate project called Regional Studies. At the request of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (vws), an extra project called Witnesses & Contemporaries was added in order to give those directly involved a voice with respect to the topic of the study. The arrangement between the government and the three institutes is explicitly not a commission but rather a co-financing arrangement.” This means that, in accordance with the principles for independent research specified by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW), the public funding body neither interferes with the content nor is responsible for the execution and results of the research, while the researchers are bound only by procedural and financial accountability to the grant provider. Throughout the research project, this relationship was never called into question.

While gradual additions were thus made to the final research design, one element of the original research design was relegated to the background: the pursuit of ‘an explanation of the violence at the micro-level, which at the time was thought to require a behavioural science approach, also with a view to ongoing and future military missions.'t Although this element of drawing lessons for the future remains relevant, we lacked the capacity and the expertise to explore this specific theme.

As mentioned above, this study aims to provide a descriptive analysis and explanation of Dutch military conduct in Indonesia, with considerable attention given to the historical, political and international context as well as to the aftermath of the war. More specifically, we consider the question whether the extreme violence of the Dutch armed forces was structural in nature and if so, why this occurred, who was responsible, and the extent to which people were held accountable for this violence at the time and later.

This line of questioning builds on previous research. In the years before 2012, and certainly in the ensuing years, an increasing number of studies were published — written, among others, by historians associated with the three institutes — that questioned the earlier views and especially the government position of 1969 regarding the incidental character of the ‘exces-

“E sive force’ used by the Dutch military on the basis of new research into the source material. Based on this historiography, a research plan was designed that included a series of studies aiming to explore key issues and address some important gaps in the existing knowledge:

e Bersiap: researched within the broader context of the dynamics of violence in the early days of the Indonesian Revolution.

o Political-administrative context: focused in particular on the question of how politics and government administration in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia dealt with information about the high level of violence during the war.

e International political context: what role did other countries play with respect to Dutch diplomatic and military policies and how did this affect the dynamics of the war?

e Comparative research on decolonization wars, with the aim of identifying similarities and unique characteristics.

e Asymmetric warfare: focused on the Dutch armed forces and the dynamics between these armed forces and the Indonesian army and other combat groups; divided into three sub-investigations: the Dutch intelligence and security services in the field; ‘technical violence’ (artillery and air forces); and military justice.

e Regional studies: a joint Indonesian-Dutch study of the context of the dynamics of violence in a number of selected Indonesian regions.

e Societal aftermath: the public and political processing of the war in the Netherlands to date.

o Witnesses & Contemporaries: This part of the research programme fulfils a different, more societal role. It is primarily designed to collect testimonies and egodocuments and thus to give more ‘colour’ and layering to the experiences and memories of those involved both then and now.

This book summarizes the most important results of the research. Part 1 outlines in three chapters and an interim conclusion the context in which the rest of the book can be understood; it is based on the historiography and therefore is a collation of mostly existing knowledge and insights. This is followed by an intermezzo that is based on the Witnesses & Contemporaries project, in which multiple perspectives are highlighted. In the second part, the results of the research programme are presented per project. In the final conclusion, the findings of the entire programme are brought together and the main question is answered. The book concludes with an epilogue by the Indonesian historian Hilmar Farid.

ORGANIZATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RESEARCH

The research programme began on 1 September 2017. In the Netherlands, the research team consisted of researchers from the three institutes as well as a number of employees hired specifically for this programme.” For the Comparative Research project, carried out in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS-KNAW), six researchers (mostly foreign) were hired for a short period of time. The projects were divided among the institutes on the basis of their expertise. The entire research team came together regularly in a Programme Council. The three directors of the institutes were in charge of the research programme, supported by a coordinator. NIOD acted as the lead institute, and the director of NIOD was the chairman of the Programme Council.’

The Scientific Advisory Board and the Social Resonance Group (Maatschappelijke Klankbordgroep’) were regularly consulted. The committee scientifically assessed the research plan and results, providing particularly valuable comments on two draft versions of this final work.” And we had intensive discussions with the Social Resonance Group about the expectations surrounding our research and the possible impact it would have on the groups most involved in this topic, such as the veterans of the Indonesian war and the Indo-Dutch and Moluccan communities. The public was periodically informed about the research design and about developments within the research through public forums — before the COVID crisis, that is — as well as via the programme website and a newsletter.

The plea in de Volkskrant in June 2012 stemmed from a conviction shared by the three institutes that thorough research was necessary to give Dutch society more clarity about the nature of the war, about extreme Dutch violence and about the actions of those involved, both during and after the war. Implicitly, the directors of the institutes were referring to a strongly felt need for a re-evaluation of the government position of 1969, but also more broadly for more critical reflection about the colonial past. Since then, this debate has not ceased. Our research programme made a modest contribution to that debate, but also became the object of it.

In 2012, bringing together these three institutes seemed the most suitable and promising way to spur the government into action. The KITLV

“E has a long tradition of conducting research on the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia, and NIOD of researching wars and mass violence in general but also specifically in Indonesia. Both institutes are part of the KNAW. The NIMH has a long track record of covering Dutch military history, including warfare in the colonies. The institute falls under the Ministry of Defence but operates under guarantees of scientific independence. The idea in 2012 was that this combination of three scientific institutes would carry sufficient weight in the societal debate and ultimately also among Dutch politicians.

But once the government decided to fund the research, the institutes faced criticism from several quarters. Part of that criticism entailed such questions as ‘Why is this only now being done?’ In a way, this criticism is justified. It is true that these institutes were also party to what is sometimes referred to as the tradition of remaining silent. This theme will be discussed in more detail elsewhere in this book.

The scientific independence, integrity and expertise of the three institutes and the research group have also been called into question. Generally speaking, it is difficult to respond to such accusations in a way that would satisfy everyone. We would merely point out that we work under the rules of scientific integrity as formulated by the KNAW. That is why it was contractually stipulated — and put into practice — that the government, as the funder, would have no influence on the content. As far as the expertise of the research team is concerned, we expect our publications to dispel those doubts. Regarding the composition of the team, it has been noted that the proportion of Indonesian researchers was small. While this is true, it does make sense given that the programme mainly asked questions about the Dutch role in the war.

A recurring reproach, made in particular by the KUKB, concerns the position of the NIMH." The claim that this institute, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Defence, is by definition unable to write critically about colonial warfare can easily be refuted: the NIMH, after all, was at the forefront of critical studies on the 1945-1949 war, even before 2017.” Another objection is that the NIMH is playing incompatible roles by cooperating both in this research and in the investigation assessing the plausibility of claims by Indonesian victims of Dutch violence and their relatives. According to this accusation, the NIMH purports in its first role to contribute to impartial scientific research, while in its second role it ‘helps’ the government to refute the claims of the victims. This is simply not the case. The NIMH is carrying out the historical verification investigation at the request of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence, based on its military-historical expertise. That investigation is conducted independently and in accordance with scientific standards. The researchers consult the relevant archives and literature available in the Netherlands and report on what can be found in those sources about the specific events mentioned in the claims and what other relevant background information those sources contain — nothing more than that. The findings are meant to inform all the parties involved as well as the court, which ultimately issues a ruling on the claims. Some of the submitted claims have in fact been granted partly on the basis of the results of this investigation.

The KITLV, the NIMH and NIOD are Dutch institutes. Although Indonesian and Dutch scholars have for decades been cooperating regularly and with often fruitful results, there has been no strong shared tradition of researching the history of the Indonesian Revolution and the war years of 1945 to 1949. After the fall of President Suharto in 1998, the scope for such cooperation grew, helped by the fact that researchers from both countries began meeting each other in wider international networks. This increased cooperation was evident in the NIOD programme From the Indies to Indonesia (2002-2008), in the KITLV’s intensive contact with a large number of Indonesian academic institutions, and also in the successful collaboration between Indonesian and Dutch heritage institutions. On the basis of these experiences, therefore, the plea in de Volkskrant and the first research proposal from 2012 already included optimistic words about the importance of — and opportunities for — intensive bilateral cooperation.

The research design produced by the KITLV, the NIMH and NIOD envisaged the use of ‘mirrored research’ in which historians from both countries would study the same regions and episodes of the war from their own perspectives and on the basis of an exchange of sources in order to conduct a comparative analysis of the results. This was to be done in particular for the ‘Bersiap’ and ‘Regional Studies’ projects, and it was expected to lead to the ‘co-creation’ of new insights in which the usually separate national historiographies would come together.

However, discussions with the envisaged Indonesian parties about the effect of such an approach quickly led to a different direction being taken. The Indonesian researchers indicated that they wanted to pursue their own priorities and did not want to be guided solely by questions arising from the ie |

Dutch perspective. Their questions were not primarily focused on Dutch violence itself but on various dimensions of the Indonesian Revolution, in particular its social impact. This research proved to be invaluable for a better understanding of the Indonesian experience of the Dutch military conduct. The Dutch researchers understood and appreciated their Indonesian colleagues’ wish to pursue different paths. The collaboration thus led not only to a better understanding of the diversity of perspectives and priorities but also to a broadening of the content of the study, although the focus remained on the Dutch war violence.

One complicating factor was that reports in the Indonesian press and social media — fuelled in part by critics in the Netherlands — began to cast the research programme in an unfavourable light by depicting it as an attempt by the Dutch to cleanse their record. This led to opposition to the project within political and military circles.” It is possible that this was one of the reasons the Indonesian archives have remained largely closed to Dutch researchers. The wary attitude of the Indonesian authorities did not come as a complete surprise to us. In the run-up to the start of this study, and until shortly before the Rutte cabinet decided to finance the research, Indonesian diplomats had made clear to both the Dutch government and the three institutes that they had serious reservations in view of the possible strains the research could put on bilateral relations. Be that as it may, as a result of these limitations and the other priorities of our Indonesian colleagues, we have not conducted the research in the way we had planned. We have uncovered fewer sources on the dynamics of violence than originally envisaged, leaving questions unanswered — questions about Indonesian perceptions of Dutch war violence and their impact on Indonesians, as well as the dynamics of violence on the Indonesian side.

Another development played a role in all of this: the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This ongoing crisis not only meant that the archives in the Netherlands and Indonesia were closed for shorter or longer periods, bringing additional delays, but also that travel became virtually impossible. Visits to Indonesian archives, interviews, workshops and field research became practically impossible from March 2020. Thus, it was often a matter of seeking ways around problems, calling on local assistance and relying on digital consultation.