For decades, the official view in the Netherlands was that the use of extreme violence only took place in exceptional circumstances.
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More than seventy years after the facts. The Dutch Prime Minister apologized on Thursday 17 February for the systematic use of “extreme brutality” by the Dutch army against Indonesian independence fighters between 1945 and 1949.
Mark Rutte regretted “the blindness of previous Dutch governments”. For decades, the official view in the Netherlands was that the use of extreme violence only took place in exceptional circumstances.
But a four-year study by Dutch and Indonesian researchers concluded that Dutch forces had “systematic” burned villages and carried out mass detentions, torture and executions in the years following World War II, with the tacit support of the government.
The researchers said that“there was a collective will to excuse him [la violence], to justify and conceal it and leave it unpunished. All this happened in order to serve the highest purpose: to win the war.”they pointed out.
In recent years, the Netherlands has finally begun to face the legacy of its colonial history, particularly in relation to Indonesia. King Willem-Alexander formally apologized in 2020 for “excessive violence” during the independence struggle. A Dutch court ruled in 2015 that the government must compensate the widows and children of Indonesian fighters executed by colonial troops.