THE SINS OF THE NETHERLANDS AGAINST THE “DUTCH EAST INDIES” (INDONESIA).

Summary of the sins of The Netherlands against the Dutch East Indies, as confessed by Pieter Bos and Wout Bouwman on their Reconciliation Visit August 1998.

1 Greed:

The Dutch did not come to “the Dutch East Indies” for anything else than the spices. This is as such a total failure to appreciate the dignity of peoples and their territory. The Dutch murdered thousands of islanders because these sold spices to the Portuguese and English (many of whom also were killed) and then forced them to grow certain crops.

The Dutch considered the Dutch East Indies as “wingewest” (region for gain). Many individual civil servants enriched themselves, and The Netherlands as a whole sucked gain out of the Dutch East Indies; it is said that the recourses to build the major infra-structural works as the Dutch railway system and the Afsluitdijk mainly were acquired from the Dutch East Indies.

2 Failing evangelism:

As long as the East Indies Company (VOC) was in charge, from 1601-1895, there was no emphasis on evangelism whatsoever. Pastors were sent to the East Indies just ministered to the VOC-employees. The Bible translation into Malay language was available for printing around 1700, but not distributed until 1857.

The churches that were planted modelled strict segregation per people group and had also a very strong cultural bias, establishing a barrier between the people groups and blurring their vision of their Saviour, thus also causing the understanding up to the present day among the Muslim inhabitants that Christianity is a western religion.

3 The policy of “divide and rule.”

The Dutch wanted to bring together the whole Dutch East Indies archipelago under their one and only rulership, and fought to conquer peoples that were not yet subjected till into the 20th century! However, they had no vision for the unity of the archipelago, rather they ruled by the motto: Divide and rule. This slogan is, even in Latin language, until this day in Indonesia a living complaint against the Dutch, as opposed to the new national motto: “Unity in Diversity”

Worst of all the Dutch allowed the Chinese immigrants (guest workers and refugees) to become the commercial mediators between us as colonisers and the indigenous peoples. By doing so we not only were hiding our greed behind the Chinese, but we also extended our spirit of greed through the Chinese, and so contributed substantially to the present hatred of indigenous Indonesians towards the Chinese population, who control at least 75% of the money flows in Indonesia.

We “used” certain more christianised peoples to conquer other more Islamic peoples.
We allowed the largest people group, the Javanese, to dominate in many ways all other (+ 620) people groups; the concept of “javanisation” was started by the Dutch.

And by making an education system separate for Dutch speaking and non Dutch speaking students, a system dividing an elite from the commons was created.

Confession only seems one-sided.
Even if there have been good things worth mentioning in the Dutch - Indonesian history, and there were, sins are not balanced out by good things. In (representative) confession of sin, the core of the matter is to call sin sin, not minding whether it sounds one-sided.

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