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History and Identity: Moluccans in the Netherlands
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The
Hague Legal Capital June
25, 2003
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The Hague Legal Capital
History and Identity: Moluccans in the Netherlands
Ben Allen & Aart Loubert
On December 2, 1975, the cause for Moluccan independence stepped out of
anonymity and onto international headlines as a group of determined Dutch Moluccan
youth seized a train in northern Holland, taking 50 passengers hostage, killing the
engineer and then coldly executing two of the passengers in front of television
cameras. The terrorists were demanding Dutch help in the struggle to regain the
independence of the south Moluccan islands, situated just east of New Guinea in the
western Pacific, an archipelago seized by Indonesian troops shortly after declaring its
independence in April 1950. The dramatic action was the first in a number of hostage
seizures that shook Holland over the next few years, marking one of the most serious
threats to Dutch civil security of the post-war period.
"It was absolutely terrible," recalls Krijn Reitsma, working in Amsterdam at the time,
"They took many innocent people hostage and killed some of them point blank. We
were just happy that more were not killed."
"It was terrible that people were getting killed," says Jootje Sinai, a second-generation
Dutch Moluccan, "You understand what they were fighting for but not why they had to
kill people. It was a terrible time and I hope it never happens again."
Today, 21 years after the last of the terrorist dramatics of the late seventies, and as
Indonesia slowly moves toward democracy, the prospects for greater Moluccan
autonomy or even Moluccan independence look brighter than ever before. But many
Moluccans living in Holland have lost the same nationalist passion that burned so
strongly two decades ago.
"I know that my history is connected with the idea of Moluccan independence, but I
don't believe in that idea any more," sighs second-generation Dutch-Moluccan Charley
Behoekoe Nam Radja, "I did when I was young. I have other ideals now, like trying to
make Holland a more successful multi-cultural society." After almost fifty years of life
in Holland, the Dutch Moluccan community is slowly giving up on its decades-old
dream of packing up and returning to an independent South Moluccas and is
struggling to succeed in the increasingly complex world of 21st-century Holland.
The story of the Moluccan community in the Netherlands is a long and complicated
one, and has its roots in commercial expansionism stretching back to the early days
of Dutch independence; 1999 marks the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of the first
Dutch ships in the Spice Islands. From ancient times the Moluccas were a top
provider of cloves and nutmeg for the world market, and in the beginning of the
seventeenth century the Dutch United East Indies Company, Verenigde Oost Indische
Compagnie (VOC), obtained a monopoly on the export of cloves from the Indies. The
VOC expanded financially and geographically, bringing almost all of the Indonesian
archi pelago under its control over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite
tremendous early promise, however, the VOC, marred by internal corruption and fierce
trading and military competition from Britain and France, did not last. It folded in 1789,
passing control of its territories over to the Dutch government.
By the end of the nineteenth century, a considerable number of Moluccan men
(primarily Christians from the island of Ambon) were entering into service with the
Dutch colonial army, the Koninklijk Nederlands-Indisch Leger (KNIL), a force that
consolidated and enforced Dutch control over the Indies. The Moluccan army
recruitment was a clever part of a Dutch colonial strategy that sought to 'divide and
conquer' the Indies. They provided the Moluccans with a higher social status and
education for their children in return for the loyal military service of Moluccan soldiers
who enforced Dutch colonialism. Jaap Wijnhoud, high-level Dutch prime ministerial
advisor for minority relations acknowledges, "we governed them very roughly... We do
have a rather bad colonial history. We played one group against the other."
The KNIL was more a police force than a military organization, striving more to
maintain law and order within the country than to defend it against a foreign
aggressor. This became very clear when Japan attacked the Netherlands-Indies with
the outbreak of World War II in the early 1940s. "The KNIL was no match against that
enemy," according to Dr. Wim Manuhuttu, director of the Moluccan Historical
Museum in Utrecht, some fifty miles south-east of Amsterdam. After two months of
fighting, the KNIL surrendered to the Japanese.
Upon assuming control of the Indies, "the Japanese quickly presented themselves as
the liberators of Indonesia against white colonialism," according to Manuhuttu.
Playing on decades of Indonesian resentment against Dutch colonialism, the
Japanese "distinguished between the rest of the Indonesians with the Christian
Ambonese who were seen as assistants, cronies, the iron fist of the Dutch. There
were a high proportion of killings and tortures perpetrated [against by Moluccans] by
the Japanese secret police." Indonesian nationalists cooperated with the Japanese
government, who gave them some freedom in running internal Indonesian affairs.
By 1944, when it had become clear that Japan would eventually lose the war,
Indonesian nationalists hurried to secure independence before the Dutch could restore
their colonial system in the islands. Two days after the Japanese surrender on August
15, 1945, the nationalists proclaimed the independent Republic of Indonesia with
Doctor Sukarno as its president. "And so," according to Manuhuttu, "one war ended
and another war began," this one a 'War of Decolonization' pitting Indonesia
nationalists, mainly from the large central Indonesian island of Java against the Dutch,
supported by the Moluccans. After some years of unsuccessful and bitter guerrilla
fighting, the Dutch, pressured by the strong post-war anti-colonialism of the United
States and United Nations, finally negotiated the formation of an independent federal
state in Indonesia in 1949. The Round Table Agreement guaranteed considerable
autonomy for the individual Indonesian states as well as Dutch commercial interests
in Batavia. This federalist state lasted only a few months, however, as the Indonesian
nationalists did away with the federalist power-sharing system and replacing it with a
unitarian government dominated by Java.
Partly as a reaction to the stridency of Indonesian (Javanian) nationalism, nationalist
feelings amongst the Moluccans was on the rise as well. During the war, many
Moluccans had suffered awfully at the hands of the Japanese occupiers, while the
Indonesian nationalists had cooperated with the Japanese. Each group blamed the
other for collaborating with the enemy. Because of their participation in the military
operations against the young Indonesian republic the Moluccans were called 'black
Dutch', 'bloodhounds of the white' and 'traitors' by the Indonesians.
"After the Indonesians changed the federal structure of the United States of Indonesia
into the Unitarian state of Indonesia [thus imposing Javanese control over all of
Indonesia], the Moluccan nationalists decided to take their fate in their own hands",
says Wim Manuhuttu, "and on April 25 1950 they proclaimed the Republik Maluku
Selatan (RMS), completely independent of Indonesia." Moluccan independence would
not last long, however, as Indonesian forces quickly invaded the islands, seized cities
and installations and forced the RMS into a bloody guerilla war.
As these dramatic events unfolded in the Moluccas, to the west, the Dutch were
demobilizing their colonial army. "The Moluccan soldiers of the former KNIL who were
stationed on Java and Sumatra were an embarrassment to the Dutch government and
because they were seen as being collaborators with the Dutch, and because the
Indonesians would not permit them to return to the Moluccas while war continued, the
Dutch government decided to bring the former KNIL-soldiers of Moluccan origin to the
Netherlands, with the intention of having them return to the Moluccas a few months
later", according to Manuhuttu.
The Dutch government placed the almost 4,000 soldiers with their wives and children
(in total approximately 12,500 individuals) ironically enough in former German
concentration camps like Westerbork and camp Vught. The Moluccans were not
encouraged to look for work because the unions in the Netherlands feared that they
would drive down Dutch workers' wages. In addition, their stay was seen as only
temporary; it was neither the intention of the Dutch nor the Moluccans themselves to
integrate into Dutch society at the time. "Forced to idleness, isolated in their camps,
robbed from their military status, confronted with another climate and struggling with
their language problems there was nothing left for them then but to drift on their hope,
their memories and their myths. One of these myths was the RMS, the independent
Moluccan state. They started to derive their identity on the RMS-ideal. Through
peaceful demonstrations and petitions they tried to move public-opinion in favor of
Moluccan independence".
But the Dutch, despite initial statements about the Moluccans eventually returning to
an independent state in their homeland, had no intention of straining their relationship
with powerful Indonesia by pressing for Moluccan independence. "Look," says
Wijnhoud, "we agreed to independence in 1949. That's the end of story. That they
change from federalism to a unitary state, that's their problem. When you say that
this country is independent you don't interfere in their domestic policies." But,
Moluccans in the Netherlands argue, the Dutch were part-guarantors of the
Roundtable Agreement of 1949 that guaranteed autonomy for Indonesia's states
When in December 1963 the Indonesian army succeeded in finally breaking the
Moluccan resistance on the island of Ceram, they arrested RMS President Chris
Soumokil, sentencing him to death by hanging, an action carried out in 1966.
According to Dr. Fridus Steijlen of Leiden Universtiy, who recently published his
doctoral dissertation on Moluccan nationalism in the Netherlands, "The death of
President Soumokil in 1966 resulted in some radical changes in the RMS-movement
in the Netherlands. At first there is a change in the RMS-government. Because of the
fall-away of president Soumokil, J.A. Manusama, who had been living in the
Netherlands since 1953, becomes the first president in exile of the RMS. Secondly,
the death of Soumokil marks the radicalization of the Moluccan community.
They have been in the Netherlands for over fifteen years and in and amongst the
growing second generation many seemed to be prepared to take the struggle over
from their parents." Charley Behoekoe Nam Radja, a second generation
South-Moluccan working for FORUM, (an institution for multicultural development in
the Netherlands) says: "I was brought up to return to the Moluccas by my parents. I
was educated to be a Moluccan in the Moluccas. My stay in Holland was only
temporary." A strong sense of Moluccan nationalism was instilled in the second
generation, and as time wore on, this second generation became increasingly
impatient.
Inspired by the explosive growth of radical movements around the world, especially
that of the Black Panthers in the United States and the Palestinian Liberation
Organization, more and more young Moluccans began to see violence as a way to
force to draw the attention of the world to their plight, to, in the words of Dr. Steijlen,
"force a resolution to the stalemate."
Leiden University Professor A. Kφbben, a member of the Advisory Commission on
South-Moluccans in the Netherlands during the 1970 relates that "the second
generation Moluccans in the Netherlands admired Che Guevara, the Black Panthers
and Yasser Arafat. They saw that using violence to get the attention of the
international community was working".
In the early seventies, a small group of young Moluccan extremists turned to violence.
Their first attack came on August 31, 1970, when thirty-three Moluccans occupied the
residence of the Indonesian Ambassador in Wassenaar (a suburb of The Hague) to
protest the announcement that Indonesia's repressive dictator was planning on
coming to the Netherlands. "It was considered the ultimate insult to the Moluccan
people of Holland that President Suharto would visit the Netherlands," according to Dr.
Manuhuttu.
In the early morning of the 31st of August 1970, the 33 forced themselves heavily
armed into the residence and killed a Dutch policeman. "It wasn't their intention to kill
this man but the whole action was characterized by a lot of misunderstandings and
mistakes," according to Manuhuttu. The Moluccan community generally supported
the actions. RMS President J. Manusama stated at that time: "I, as the president,
totally support the actions. What has happened in Wassenaar is a political
statement, an act of patriotism. The occupiers are heroes, no murderers. For twenty
years the Netherlands ignored us and supported Indonesia. Officer Molenaar [the
officer killed] is the victim of that. In the whole world our case has attracted attention.
The youngsters achieved that".
Despite the action, however, the Dutch government failed to react, and five years later,
in 1975, seven Moluccans from the age of 19-25 years decided to hit both the
Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam and, for the first time, a Dutch civilian target,
hijacking a passenger train between in the north-east of Holland and to force Dutch
action on pushing for independence in the Moluccas. Three civilians were killed by the
terrorists to pressure the Dutch government into negotiation quickly. The youths sent
out a statement demanding from the Dutch people and government that they support
their demands "for the peace and faith of the repressed Moluccan people and for
peace in the world". Their message ended with a reference to the Dutch colonial past:
"if some innocent Dutch got killed for the Moluccan cause, let the Dutch people not
forget that in the past thousands and thousands of Moluccans have given their lives for
the Dutch cause". Holland's troubling colonial past reared its ugly head again. At first,
the reaction of the Moluccan community was one of shock, but during the action
sympathy for their cause grew. Because of the brutality of the killings, however,
President Manusama called them "A bunch of terrorists". Finally, the hijackers were
persuaded into turning themselves in.
Two years later, in what Prime Minister Joop Den Uyl called, "the worst attack ever on
the order of the Dutch state," hijackers seized another train and a primary school,
taking more than one hundred school children hostage. The children were finally
released before Dutch marines stormed both the school and the train, killing six of the
hijackers. The 1977 action was followed by a smaller action in 1978, when a provincial
government building in the north-eastern Dutch city of Assen was seized and held for
a little more than a day before being seized by another contingent of Dutch marines.
While the hijackings did not succeed in moving the Moluccas any closer to
independence, they did help bring about fundamental changes in the approach of
Dutch public policy. Utrecht University professor Frank Bovenkerk, an expert on
contemporary Dutch and Western European minority issues, explained in a recent
lecture to the Amsterdam-based Humanity in Action program that the Dutch
governmental response to the Moluccan hijackings marked a key departure from the
previous minority policy in the Netherlands. "Instead of treating and confronting [the
Moluccan community] in a hostile way as political trouble-makers, the Dutch
government saw the hijackings as a response to the socio-economic conditions they
faced in the Netherlands." According to Bovenkerk, the hijackings served as a
wake-up call to the Dutch government, eager to avoid American-style minority and
racial problems. It responded with social programs that sought to increase
educational and employment opportunities for Dutch minorities in general.
"Since the seventies," says Jaap Wijnhoud, senior advisor to the Prime Minister on
minority affairs, "[the Moluccan] problem became more visible. We began to see it as
a different [kind of] problem."
The process of reaching out to the needs of the Moluccan community culminated in
the 1986 issuance of the "Mutual Statement" by Moluccan community leader Rev.
Metiarij and Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. "It was a job plan," according to
Wijnhoud, which, in addition to giving KNIL veterans a yearly allowance and providing
funds for a Moluccan historical museum, laid down a framework to create
job-opportunities for 1,000 Moluccan youth.
The Mutual Statement was more than just a job plan, however. It marks a recognition
of sorts on the part of the Dutch Moluccan community that its stay in the Netherlands
could no longer be considered "temporary", that they were, in fact, here for the long
run.
Charley Behoekoe talks of how he used to speak to white Dutch groups trying to
explain the actions of his radical countrymen hijacking trains. "The Dutch didn't know
the history [of the Dutch Moluccan community]. In the history books, no one told
them why and how we got here." As he spoke to them about the reasons behind the
hijackings, he found himself "in between explaining and justifying [the actions of the
terrorists]. I was angry because the Dutch didn't understand." But time has changed
Behoekoe, and most of those in his generation. "Your children grow up, and you see
them live in Holland, grow up in Holland, speak Dutch, developing Dutch values. I want
my children to be happy. If they are happy in Holland, who am I to be educating them
to go back to the Moluccas? So I stay in Holland... I am not a Moluccan anymore.
There is a connection between me and the Moluccan islands but it is through my
parents." Three years ago, Behoekoe took Dutch nationality.
A recent study on third generation Moluccans published earlier this year in the
British-based Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies found that most of those it
interviewed "emphasized that they lived in the Netherlands and that their future was in
this country." Victor Joseph, a Moluccan journalist who runs the weekly "Voice of
Molucca" Dutch radio program, says that Moluccans in Holland feel as though they
might better serve those in their homeland by remaining in the Netherlands. "If we
stay here, we can strive for an independent Moluccas effectively. Look at the Jewish
lobby in the Statesthey'll stay there for centuries, but they're still very connected with
Israel."
Third generation Moluccan youth still feel an emotional connection to the RMS as a
symbol of their ethnic identity and out of respect for their elders. Dennis, a 22-year old
with blue-dyed hair now living in Amsterdam says, "I support the RMS. I stand behind
it." However, he has no plans of returning home, and speaks of the differences that
history has wrought between the first and third generation of Dutch Moluccans. "I
think the third generation is much further distant from the first generation. We are a
part of this western culture... We support RMS for our parents, our grandparents."
So what has become of the passionate nationalism of the seventies? The violent
separatism of the past has given way to a more practical concern for conditions in the
Moluccas. "I believe in a free Moluccas. It would be a dream come true," beams
second-generation Jootje Sinai, "but we need to look at what is going on at this
moment." As the Indonesian government continues the painfully slow process of
counting the peoples' votes from the June 7 presidential election, sectarian violence
and poverty still plague life on the Moluccan isles. Clashes between Muslims and
Christians have left some 200 people dead this year already. And the politics of
separatism have taken a back seat to more immediate concerns. "I think that the
general Moluccan community [in the Netherlands] is still in favor of the idea of more
autonomy, more self-determination [for the Moluccas]," says Steijlen, "but their main
concern is how to restore cohesion.
It's broken. They say, 'Why should we worry about self-determination when all this
[violence] is going on. We have to fix the immediate situation, because society is
being killed.'" Sinai, who has visited her relatives living in the Moluccas, while fully
supportive of the RMS, emphasizes the need for attention to be paid to practical
concerns on the islands. "It's easy for us to say that the Moluccas have to be free but
we must remember about the people there trying to earn their daily bread. The simple
things of daily life. The simple things need to be taken care of before we can go
forward." Those simple things include "infrastructure, building, bridges, water, pipes.
They need water. The very practical things have to be [taken care of]. It's difficult to
talk politics when the practical things are not there."
Fifty years after the arrival of 12,500 Moluccans 'temporarily' brought to the
Netherlands, the Dutch Moluccan community appears to be in Holland for good. Their
task in the coming century will be that of balancing the rich cultural heritage and
history of their forefathers with the demands of life in the complex, multi-ethnic,
westernized world that is the Netherlands today, a task faced by the younger
generation of all of Holland's many immigrant groups. According to Behoekoe,
Moluccans will need to "let their identity evolve in a more integrated way, to make it
possible to live together with other people in Holland. That is my wish, my ideal. The
Moluccan identity like we know now will not exist anymore. There will come another
identity [in relation to] our roots in Moluccan history. And it's the task of our children
to develop this new sense of identity."
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