Why is the Netherlands so concerned about Bouterse when they themselves committed mass slaughter in Indonesia in 1946?

Answer

Hi Danny,

Comparing crimes is difficult. Numbers of victims, for example, are not the only yardstick, the circumstances also play a role.

First the facts:

• The Rawagede massacre took place on 9 December 1947 (not 1946). During an offensive against independence fighters in East Java, the Dutch army killed all the men of the village (now called Balongsari). Officially, they were looking for the hideout of rebel leader Lukas Kustario and suspected the villagers of protecting him. There were more than 400 casualties. In January, the UN condemned the action as a war crime. In the Netherlands this took some time: in 1969 it was reluctantly admitted that ‘about twenty’ people had been executed. In 1995 and 2007 there were Dutch television programs that did aim for apologies. In 2008, ten survivors demanded compensation, and the Dutch ambassador attended the commemoration. In 2009, a Dutch court ruled that the facts were time-barred, which led to outrage, especially in the NRC Handelsblad (‘war crimes should not be time-barred!’). Finally, at the end of 2011, the Dutch government offered an amount of 20,000 euros per creditor, and the ambassador apologized for the massacre. The commanding officer during the massacre, Major Alphons Wijnen, was never prosecuted. Even worse, during a campaign in South Salawesi in Dec 1947-Jan 1948, Raymond Westerling used similar techniques, raiding villages and killing the male inhabitants one by one to obtain information and sow terror. He too was never prosecuted.
• The December Murders took place on December 8, 1982 in Fort Zeelandia, Paramaribo. It concerned the settlement of military leader Desi Bouterse against 15 political opponents, who were initially dismissed as failed attempts to escape from captivity. In 1983 and 1984, a UN commission concluded that these were summary executions after all, and were therefore crimes. Within Suriname, a judicial investigation was only started in 2000, just before the limitation period. Bouterse then had hardly any political power. In 2007, he admitted political responsibility for the killings, but asked for amnesty for all involved. Since then, the trial has been regularly delayed by the defendants’ defense. There is also political opposition to prosecution: recently, in March 2012, an amnesty law was passed in Suriname, which is, however, unconstitutional according to the opposition. Testimonies from the recent trial would not only show that Bouterse was indeed present during the murders, but even participated in them.

In both cases there was indeed outrage in the Netherlands. Some differences between both historical crimes:

• randomly chosen victims, out of racist motives (Rawade), versus a political reckoning on well-chosen well-known figures (Zeelandia);
• a trial started 60 years after the fact (Rawagede), versus one after 19 years (Zeelandia);
• the direct responsibility of ‘lower’ army commanders in a chaotic guerilla war (Wijnen and Westerling), versus the direct responsibility of a former head of government and current president (Bouterse);
• the direct consequences of both crimes: in Indonesia it led to unification of the resistance against colonialism and accelerated independence, in Suriname to years of ‘Internal War’, which disrupted the country with even more war crimes;
• of course also the origin and status of the perpetrators: ethnic Dutch people who lost a war of independence, versus a Surinamese who committed successful coups before and later.