Suchergebnisse

During the Indonesian war of independence, reports of alleged war crimes by Dutch soldiers penetrated the Netherlands only sparsely. Even so, it was during the war that the first calls for an independent investigation into such reports were heard. After repeated calls from the Tweede Kamer, a commission of three lawyers was finally sent to Indonesia in October 1949 with the task of carrying out a non-judicial investigation into the allegations of extreme violence. For various reasons, this enquiry commission submitted reports on only two cases, which were only signed by two of the three commission members, Kees van Rij and Wim Stam. Until 1969, the existence of these reports remained hidden from parliament and the outside world. During the preparation of the 'Excessennota', the reports resurfaced and never filed reports on six other cases were found. All eight reports played a crucial role in the drafting of the note, while the report on South Sulawesi in particular would prove of great importance for the historiography of the war. Up until now, the reports by Van Rij and Stam had been hidden deep in the archives. This source publication, preceded by an extensive introduction, makes them accessible to a wider public for the first time.

While the Netherlands is still struggling with the question of how serious and widespread the violence was in the Indonesian War of Independence, that history can be found everywhere in Indonesia. Monuments and burial grounds are the silent witnesses of the battle and the stories of the war are still circulating. Remco Raben and Peter Romijn argue in this book that the way the Netherlands has long viewed the war in Indonesia has its origins in the language and the manipulation of information during that war. They investigate the mentality of administration and politics in Indonesia and the Netherlands and trace the path that knowledge about violence has taken, from the villages and fields in Indonesia to the desks of administrators, politicians and journalists in the Netherlands. This book shows how the cover-up of violence in Indonesia worked. It explains why war crimes and other large-scale violence against the Indonesian population were tolerated, how the army was able to dominate the provision of information about the war, how administrative mechanisms and mentalities promoted the concealment, how Dutch politicians looked away, and how Indonesian voices were systematically were ignored.