Yesterday was the commemoration of the official end of Word War Two for the Kingdom of the Netherlands with the surrender of Japan in 1945. Indonesia was liberated and on the 17th of August they declared their independence from the Netherlands. But the Netherlands had no intention of giving up the colony and a bloody battle for freedom followed.
My maternal family originates from the former Dutch East Indies. I say former because I recognise their independence date as 17-08-1945. My grandfather was part of the Dutch East Indies navy during the war and ended up as a prisoner of war in a forced labour camp in Japan until the surrender.
My grandmother was imprisoned in a Japanese camp in Sulawesi during the occupation and had been liberated with the rest of the county in 1945.
The dirty period following that is a dark page in Dutch history. No matter the cost, the Netherlands intended to take back the colony. A lot of Indonesian civilians and freedom fighters were slaughtered in name of Queen and Country. It wasn’t until 2020 that King Willem-Alexander of Orange had formally apologised to Indonesia for the amount of violence the Netherlands had inflicted there.
Merdeka! The Netherlands finally let go of their colony but my family was still living there. My grandparents had met and fallen in love and started raising a family. Two children born during the conflict and five after Indonesia gained their independence. My mother is a child of the Republic born in 1953. They sang songs when the Sang Merah Putih (the Indonesian flag) was hoisted in honor of the Republic.
My grandparents tried to make it work but 300 years of oppression has left deep scars in the country. The Indonesians couldn’t punish the royal family nor the Dutch politicians for their crimes against humanity. They were thousands of miles away. But anyone who had aconnection with the former coloniser, through bloodlines or other means was treated like an outcast. Discrimination rose and you either had to suck it up or leave.
My family left Indonesia quite late, in 1963. My grandfather’s brothers had fled to the Netherlands or USA during the occupation, the rest had passed away. My grandmother had to leave her whole family behind, her mother, sister and step-sister.
Repatriation had already begun in 1945, so my grandparents and their children had not experienced the chilling welcome message hung at the port of Rotterdam. Indo’s ga weg, Indos go away. The Dutch were not happy to see these foreigners arrive from the colony. They were busy recovering from the Nazi occupation and now there are more people coming in they needed to feed and house. Around 300.000 people came to the Netherlands.
They were housed in former Jewish labour camps and boarding houses. The boarding houses received financial incentive of the goverment to house the repatriates while the repatriates had to contribute 60% of their monthly income for room and board. Many ended up in debt like my grandfather.
My mother and her parents ended up in Oisterwijk sharing a boarding house with 4 other families for a little over a year. The rooms weren’t spacious and a welfare worker came to check up if they were discarding their savage customs for proper Dutch customs. No more rice or gamelan business! Their forced integration and attempt of Indonesian culture erasure still makes my blood boil. Especially when I hear Dutch people boast about how they went for an elaborate Indonesian meal. Fuck you with your peas in Nasi Goreng! And why so salty, it’s unhealthy and ruins the flavour of the dish.
What also didn’t help was the province they ended up living in, North-Brabant. While most of our relatives ended in South-Holland, they started their Dutch life in one of the whitest places of this country. Getting stared at, talked about behind their backs, being asked if the colour rubs off. What a ridiculous place.
My mother had to grow up in a prejudiced place.
Do you eat dogs?
Is your vagina the same as that of a white person?
Why do you smell like that?
Did you live in a brick house there? I can’t imagine you would have brick houses in the jungle.
How is it to finally wear shoes? Must have been hard living in a dirty place like that.
Do you know how to use a knife and fork?
Because my grandfather had become very ill when arriving in the Netherlands and he was unable to earn his room and board for the family, my oldest two uncles had to work in his stead. While they did earn an education in Indonesia, the government here did not acknowledged it here and they ended up in menial jobs in factories. Life was hard for them.
It became really hard to make a living with so many debts they had to pay back, my grandfather ended up dying in debt in 1975. It took his children years to pay it all back.
“In order to achieve something, it was advisable for Indos in the Dutch East Indies to behave as ‘white’ as possible,” And they clung to this ideology after repatriation to the Netherlands. This trauma was passed on from my grandmother, to my mother and ultimately to me. It planted a seed in me that I had to achieve better than the average Dutch person, so they would look beyond the colour of my skin and the flatness of my nose.
But they never did, because when they dislike you they would always attack you on your external characteristics.
Yesterday, I was listening in disbelief to the speech of the King at the commemoration. No regrets or apologies, king was affected by ‘cold reception’ of Indo community when arriving in the Netherlands.
The king emphasized his gratitude to the Indo community. ‘I have the greatest admiration for the perseverance of all those families who, after the war, fought back against oppression, found their place in our country. Even more so: they helped rebuild our country and have used their talents for generations. Thank you for your unprecedented contribution to our society.’
But who was the cause of the colonisation? The Dutch East India Company together with the Dutch Royals. If some Dutch white guy never put his dick in an Indonesian woman, we would not have existed. My family never caused the colonisation but ended up with the burden of the colonisation. Chased out of a country they long had called home. And now I need to hear this pompous git saying he feels affected by the suffering they had to endure adjusting to their new home?
I don’t blame the shift in sentiment of the Indonesian people, they wanted their country back like any of the other colonies in the world. But I do blame the Dutch for their ignorance about the effect of colonisation on countries and its people.