Wednesday, October 10, 2012

The Galung Lombok Massacre


The Galung Lombok Massacre

List of the victims, see in the article in:

http://batarahutagalung.blogspot.com/2012/06/galung-lombok-massacre-list-of.html


       *******

Friday, March 16, 2012

Kritische noot standbeeld Coen niet kritisch genoeg

           
HOORN, WO 14 MRT 2012 - De gemeenteraad van Hoorn heeft na maanden van discussie en actie een nieuwe tekst opgesteld voor op de sokkel van Jan Pieterszoon Coen. Voorstanders van verplaatsing van het standbeeld zijn niet tevreden.

 De gemeenteraad van Hoorn besloot vorig jaar een 'kritische noot' te plaatsen op de sokkel van het beeld. Dit gebeurde naar aanleiding van een burgerinitiatief 'Ja voor Hoorn, nee tegen Coen' dat de raad vroeg een keuze te maken tussen verwijdering van het beeld en plaatsing van een aangepaste sokkeltekst.

Na maanden overleg komt straks op de sokkel te staan dat Coen zijn successen als gouverneur-generaal van Nederlands-Indië in dienst van de VOC op zeer gewelddadige wijze boekte. Verder wordt vermeld dat het standbeeld niet onomstreden is. "Volgens critici verdient Coens gewelddadige handelspolitiek in de Indische archipel geen eerbetoon".

Op de sokkel komt verder geen expliciete verwijzing naar de aangerichte volkerenmoord op de Indonesische Banda-eilanden. In de tekst [zie kader] die dinsdagavond door de raad werd aangenomen ontbreekt dat J.P. Coen als gouverneur-generaal van de VOC in 1621 de Banda-eilanden heeft ontvolkt.

Wethouder Peter Westenberg verklaarde eerder al in de Hoornse raadscommissie termen als 'volkerenmoord' en 'genocide' te willen vermijden omdat hij geen 'moreel oordeel' wil uitspreken over de daden van J.P. Coen. Alle partijen in de Hoornse gemeenteraad, uitgezonderd de SP, steunden het tekstvoorstel van de gemeente.

Leden van het burgerinitiatief vinden dan ook dat er van de beloofde kritische noot niks terecht is gekomen. “Hoorn ontkent genocide”, zegt woordvoerder Eric van de Beek. “Dat Coen de Molukse Banda-eilanden ontvolkte, wordt bevestigd door een groep van negen historici van naam en faam die wij hebben geconsulteerd. Hoorn doet wat Turkije wordt verweten ten aanzien van de Armeense genocide.”

In 1621 liet Coen een slachting aanrichten op het Molukse eilandje Banda, destijds de enige plaats waar muskaatnoten groeiden. Omdat de bewoners niet alleen aan de VOC leverden en eerder VOC-dienaren hadden vermoord, greep Coen in. Daarbij kwam de complete bevolking van het eilandje om. Tientallen leiders van Banda werden geëxecuteerd, veel andere Bandanezen werden vermoord, anderen werden als slaven weggevoerd.

De indiener van het burgerinitiatief laat het er voorlopig bij zitten. "Dankzij het burgerinitiatief is het op de agenda gezet, helaas met een teleurstellend resultaat. Ik zou niet weten wat ik verder nog kan doen, ik laat het maar over aan de volgende generatie", zei hij.

----------------------------------------------- 

 De tekst die de gemeente Hoorn zal plaatsen op de sokkel:

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Hoorn 1587-Batavia 1629)

Koopman, directeur-generaal en gouverneur-generaal van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). Vormgever van het succesvolle handelsimperium van de VOC in Azië. Stichter van Batavia, het huidige Jakarta.

Geroemd als krachtdadig en visionair bestuurder. Maar evenzeer bekritiseerd om zijn gewelddadige optreden bij het verwerven van handelsmonopolies in Indië. Voerde in 1621 een strafexpeditie uit tegen één van de Banda-eilanden, omdat de bewoners tegen het verbod van de VOC nootmuskaat leverden aan de Engelsen. Duizenden Bandanezen lieten hierbij het leven, de overlevenden werden naar Batavia gedeporteerd.

Coen kreeg aan het eind van de negentiende eeuw de status van nationale held, compleet met standbeeld in zijn geboortestad. Een landelijk oprichtingscomité onder leiding van de Hoornse burgemeester Van Dedem zamelde hiervoor het geld in. Het bronzen beeld, een ontwerp van Ferdinand Leenhoff (1841-1914), leraar aan de Academie voor Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam, werd in 1893 feestelijk onthuld.

Onomstreden is het standbeeld niet. Volgens critici verdient Coens gewelddadige handelspolitiek in de Indische archipel geen eerbetoon.

Meer weten over Jan Pieterszoon Coen? Scan de QR code en bezoek het Westfries Museum, waar de beroemde portretten van Coen en zijn vrouw Eva Ment te zien zijn, gemaakt door de kunstenaar Jacob Waben.

=======================
Comment:

Batara Richard Hutagalung - March 16, 2012 - 09:13 pm

On May 30, 1619 JP Coen attacked Jayakarta, destroyed the city and gave a
new name: Batavia. It was the beginning of genocide on Banda Island,
slavery, slave trade, opium trade and the beginning of 'de gouden eeuw'
for Netherlands.

Not enough bringing death and misery during the colonial period until
March 9, 1942, after Indonesia proclaimed it's independence on August 17,
1945, the Netherlands (after suffering under German occupation and
Japanese internment) sent 150.000 soldiers to Indonesia to reinstall the
colonization, and committed massacres again. Now the whole world knows
about massacre in Rawagede, committed by the Dutch soldiers on December 9,
1947.

Not yet revealed was the massacre in South Sulawesi (especially in Galung
Lombok village), Kranggan (middle Java), the death train of Bondowoso etc.
I think it is time that the Dutch peoples and the Indonesian peoples
discuss about the 400 years common history, and the Dutch military
aggression in Indonesia 1945-1950. To do the 'people to people diplomacy',
because both governments, Indonesian and Dutch, are trying to cover the
black pages in the Dutch-Indonesian-history. Our young generations deserve
to know what really happened, and to do everything, so that it should
never happen again in the future.
The young generation in Indonesia is not seeking for revenge, but they
would like to know the truth.

In my weblog I wrote about the VOC and the massacre on Banda Island (unfortunately in Indonesian language):
My weblogs:

Greetings from Jakarta,
Batara R. Hutagalung

Source: 

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Monday, March 12, 2012

Girls' School in Bali 1941

I hope this is not the reason why the Dutch did not want to leave Indonesia! Or ...?



Balinese school girls...
with their very happy Dutch teachers


Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Craft of the Historian: Revolution, Reaction & Reform from a Javanese Perspective, 1785-1855

The Craft of the Historian:

Revolution, Reaction & Reform

from a Javanese Perspective, 1785-1855


National History Day. Wednesday 29th February 2012 at The British International School Jakarta.

Key note speech by Dr. Peter Carey

Born of parents who had made their lives in Asia, the Far East has always been a part of my life. My first seven years (1948-55) were spent in Burma and these early years marked me. 

Snowshill Lavender farm. Peter Carey, July 2010

In my very traditional British boarding school – Winchester - I retained a fascination for SE Asia. But studying Southeast Asian history for A level was sadly not an option. It was the same at Oxford. Even though my Oxford tutors quickened my love of history through insisting that I use primary sources, it was not until I graduated in 1969 that I was able to pursue my Asian interests.

Like all the best things in life, the unexpected had a hand in determining my decision to take up SE Asian history. On finishing my written exams, I was placed on the borderline between a First and a Second-Class Honours degree. This necessitated an oral examination – then called a ‘viva’ (viva voce). I contacted my French Revolution Special Subject tutor in Balliol, Richard Cobb (1917-96), who had inspired me with his idea that a successful historian has to have a ‘second identity’ in the country and epoch she is studying: for Richard it was late eighteenth-century France. I asked him to prepare me for the viva. His idea of preparation was to invite me to take a pint of beer with him on Balliol lawn.

Balliol College Lawn

Richard Cobb

It was a wonderful June evening and who should walk over to join us but the chair of the History Examination Board, Professor Jack Gallagher, a famous historian of India and imperial Britain. ‘And what will you do with a First, young man, if you give a good account of yourself in the oral exam tomorrow?’ He asked. ‘Oh! That’s easy!’ I replied, ‘Richard has been such an inspiring tutor that I will look at a French department and write a local history of the French Revolution.’ ‘Don’t do that!’ came Gallagher’s immediate reply, ‘that’s an over-subscribed field. But if you like that period why don’t you study the impact of the French Revolution overseas by looking at Java during the administration of Napoleon’s only non-French marshal – Herman Willem Daendels (1762-1818; in office as Governor-General, 1808-11). His papers must be somewhere in the Colonial Archives in The Hague or Paris. Give it some thought!’

This was a bombshell and it did indeed get me thinking. I had an English Speaking Union (ESU) scholarship to do graduate studies at Cornell University in the USA. Why not use that opportunity to take up Jack Gallagher’s challenge? I arrived and announced to my Cornell professors that Daendels and his French Revolutionary inspired colonial administration in Java was my research topic. ‘Great! But that’s not what we do here!’ they said. ‘First, learn the local languages (Indonesian and Javanese) along with the language of the colonial administration – Dutch – and then tell us what you want to do!’  Starting with Dutch, I headed for Cornell’s famed Olin Library, taking out HJ de Graaf’s Geschiedenis van Indonesie (History of Indonesia) (1949) in its Dutch original which I read from cover to cover. When I came to his chapter on the Java War (1825-30), my eye fell on an etching of the Javanese prince, Diponegoro (1785-1855), who had led the five-year struggle against the Dutch. I then had what the Javanese would call a ‘kontak batin’ (a communication from the heart). It was a Eureka moment. Who was this mysterious figure on horseback at the head of his troops entering the prepared encampment from whence he would be captured by treachery and exiled to the Celebes (Sulawesi) for the rest of his life (1830-55).  Maybe instead of the very European Daendels, I would look at the impact of the French Revolution in its colonial setting by studying the life and thoughts of someone at the receiving end, the quintessential Javanese prince, Diponegoro, now one of Indonesia’s foremost national heroes.

Fighting Java war

The rest is history. Over 40 years have passed since I sat on Balliol lawn, and in that time my whole professional life has been focused on thinking and writing about Diponegoro. In 2007 my magnum opus biography – Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855  - was published by the Royal Institute for SE Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden, and sold out its first two editions. This month it will come out in an expanded Indonesian language edition: Kuasa Ramalan: Pangeran Diponegoro dan Akhir Tatanan Lama di Jawa, 1785-1855  (Jakarta: Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia). The age through which Diponegoro lived in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Java is an excellent illustration of the theme of the current History Day – Revolution, Reaction and Reform. The Revolutions through which he lived were not made in Java but imported from Europe: namely the twin industrial and political revolutions which tore the old regimes in both Europe and Asia apart and hit Java like an Asian tsunami with the coming of Daendels in January 1808.

Dipanegara's seal

In the space of under a decade (1808-16) during the administrations of the Napoleonic marshal and his British nemesis, Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826; in office, 1811-16), the old colonial order of the Dutch East India Company (1603-1799) was destroyed and a new Netherlands-Indies administration (1818-1942) was born in its place. This Administration’s founding charter – the constitutional regulation (regeerings-reglement) of January 1818 - envisaged a new legal order or rechtstaat and a complete replacement of the corrupt administration of the Company by a new colonial administrative service. This was the reform which turned Java into one of the most lucrative colonies in the world. In the space of just forty years following the end of the Java War, the Dutch took USD75 billion in today’s money out of the island through the profits they made from the ‘Cultivation System’ (1830-70) – in which export crops like sugar, tea, coffee and indigo were bought at low fixed prices from Javanese farmers and sold on world markets at international rates.

Old Dipanegara

This underlying energy to make profits at any price sparked the reaction of the Java War in which the twin forces of Javanese nationalism and Islam were united under Diponegoro’s ‘holy war’ banner. For the probably the first time in Javanese history, all sections of society were brought together in a single cause. Diponegoro’s efforts came to naught, but his name lived on and just ninety years after his death in 1855, the Indonesians once more rose against the Dutch and after four years of guerrilla war known as the Indonesian Revolution (1945-49), they eventually won their formal independence from Holland in 1949. Revolution, Reaction, Reform colonial style was thus played out across the world’s largest archipelago which placed on the map of Europe would stretch from Lisbon to Minsk and Copenhagen to Ankara. This is an Asian epic, a chapter of world history which at this year’s National History Day you can begin to explore. 

Remember the National History Day gives you a rare opportunity to learn the value of rigorous academic research and how such research can shape popular perceptions and events. Cathy Gorn, the Executive Director of the NHD who has just been awarded the prestigious National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama, in her acceptance speech cited how three students along with their History teacher from Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, helped to change history in the famous ‘Mississipi Burning’ case. The students selected the 1964 murders of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, for their National History Day Project, creating a documentary that presented important new evidence and helped convince the state of Mississippi to investigate, reopen the case and convict Edgar Ray Killen for the murders. Just think of that - a documentary based on painstaking research which helps to change the course of justice. Just amazing!

Here in Indonesia, Batara Hutagalung (Surabaya, 1944-    ), an historian from North Sumatra who has written numerous books on colonial history (including the British military campaign in Surabaya in November 1945 which left thousands dead), also won a significant victory for the cause of justice. His persistence in securing evidence regarding the Rawagede massacre of 9 December 1947 during the Indonesian War of Independence against the Dutch (1945-49) won a ruling from a Dutch court on 14 September 2011. The court ordered that €20.000 compensation be paid by the Dutch Government to each of the eight remaining widows of the 431 young men massacred by Dutch troops in a village between Karawang and Bekasi. Long immortalised in Indonesian poet Chairil Anwar’s 1948 poem ‘Karawang-Bekasi’ whose opening lines read: ‘We who lie sprawled between Karawang and Bekasi cannot cry ‘Freedom’ or raise our weapons any more!’ Batara Hutagalung’s research symbolically raised the bodies of those massacred young men and brought them to the court room, thus ensuring their eventual valediction.

Remember, through their writings and research historians can literally change the course of history. Knowledge is power and for those who serve the Muse of History, Clio, that power is very considerable. But to use it properly there must be great intellectual integrity and honesty of purpose. All too often history can be abused for political ends – think of the way history is written in dictatorships and totalitarian states. Today you will learn how the craft of the historian can be applied. That craft requires skill and motivation. It is open to abuse and to honour. Today you will learn the path of honour. You are embarking on a journey which will literally change your life. Make sure you have packed everything you need for the road and step forward with confidence!

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step!

Dr. Peter Carey
Fellow Emeritus of Trinity College, Oxford
18 February 2012  
------------------

Dr. Peter Carey, author of the book:
‘The Power of Prophecy: Prince Dipanagara and the End of an Old Order in Java, 1785-1855’,
KITLV 2007

---------------------------- 
Published with permission from Dr. Peter Carey


Sunday, January 15, 2012

WARLOVECHILD: Forgotten victims of Dutch military aggression in Indonesia


I received an email from the organization Oorlogsliefdekind. I’m interested to help this project, to unite former Dutch military personnel and their offspring. I have sent information about this matter in Indonesian language to many mailing lists and to Indonesian press.

Batara R. Hutagalung
Chairman of The Committee of Dutch Honorary Debts
-------------------------------------------

WARLOVECHILD unites military personnel and their offspring
Dutch servicemen and their secret children born in wartime Indonesia - 
 
Warlovechild.org breaks the silence about a blind spot in Dutch-Indonesian history with a successful crossmedia project which deals with the secret children fathered by Dutch servicemen and Indonesian women during the decolonization-war between the Netherlands and Indonesia (1945-1949). The family finding website contains a wide variety of personal testimonials and family-snapshots gathered through extensive oral history research. All information is now accessible to an international audience with an online English version at www.warlovechild.org.

The saying ‘all is fair in love and war’ refers to matters of the heart and soul which are difficult to control and contain. No wonder that a lot of commotion was caused among veterans in the Netherlands, their relatives and people of mixed Indonesian-European descent when the website warlovechild.org and the historical documentary Sir Daddy (Tuan Papa) was released. The unreserved testimonials about love and sexuality in wartime made painfully clear that the most intensive Dutch war effort ever had the birth of thousands of mixed-blooded children as an unforeseen consequence. Warlovechild.org breaks the taboo about this subject by creating a safe and neutral digital environment where stories of both children and fathers are shared and commented on. Many of the 'warlovechildren' never met their fathers but kept on looking for them all their lives. Fathers also decide, sometimes after sixty years, to search for their secret children born from an Indonesian war romance. Often the reactions show that children of Dutch marriages who have found out about daddy’s secret want to meet their unknown Indonesian half-siblings.

The family finding tool on the website functions as an effective way to start quests for long lost relatives or newly discovered families. The Warlovechild project collected a wide variety of testimonials of children, fathers, their Dutch offspring and even mothers, both in the Netherlands and Indonesia. Veterans tell about their wartime affairs and sexuality, their children describe the harassment they faced as an occupier's child and the mothers recall romantic and sad moments from their memories. A huge amount of original historical documents such as birth certificates, family-snapshots and military reports have been brought together for the first time to give a unique insight into the secret life of love in wartime. The Warlovechild.org serves as a portal for a growing community of people with similar roots. At the same time it is a source for new historical research.

It is remarkable that we know of young Dutch girls who gave birth to children of German military during the Nazi-occupation or of the allied military after the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944/1945. But no historian nor journalist has ever tackled the role of Dutch military as absent fathers of Dutch-Indonesian children after the colonial war of 1945-1949.

Due to post-colonial migration of Dutch-Indonesian veterans as well as their family, kin and halfcast offspring, many can be found in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. To reach this internationally dispersed target group, the website www.warlovechild.org is now accessible in English as well as in Dutch. The financing of an Indonesian version is currently being investigated. The 80 minutes documentary Sir Daddy with unique archival footage and personal interviews is available in English, Dutch and Indonesian. An impression of the making of Sir Daddy can also be watched on the website as well as a blog by the makers.

Keywords: love in wartime, family finder, oral history, colonial past, Netherlands, Indonesia, secret children, crossmedia, website, television, documentary, Indo-European

More information (not for publication): Promoters mrs. Stef Scagliola (historian), mrs. Annegriet Wietsma (interviewer/director) and mr. Jean Hellwig (producer/director) can be reached for further information at: info@oorlogsliefdekind.nl / +31-6-2127 1555 / +31-20-462 0018

Warlovechild is produced by Hellwig Productions Audiovisuals
with the support of: Heritage of War programme, NTR, VPRO, Dutch Cultural Media Fund, V-fonds, Bank Giro Loterij, Data Archiving and Networked Services

This message is sent to you because we think you may be interested in its contents. We apologize for cross-sending. 
  

Warlovechild
Zeeburgerpad 53
1019 AB  Amsterdam
the Netherlands
phone +31 20 462 0018
www.warlovechild.org

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Batavia 1941


A bit of nostalgia.
Beautiful video of Batavia/Jakarta 1941


Met hartelijke groeten uit Jakarta,
Batara R. Hutagalung