|
by
FUKADA Yusuke
Readers, especially senior readers, of
Sankei newspaper were shocked to read an article which said the
government of the Netherlands was apparently seeking for an apology
from the Japanese Emperor, during his planned visit there in May,
with the Empress. This article appeared in Sankei's evening edition
on January 26th.
Apparently, the source of this news was a
report from a major Dutch daily that Prime Minister Kok and Foreign
Affairs Minister van Aartsen have dispatched a special envoy to
Japan, whose mission seems to be to persuade the Japanese government
into having the Emperor apologize for Japan's past war crimes:
During the last war, in former Dutch East Indies (present-day
Indonesia), the Japanese army had confined many Dutch nationals in
internment camps, many of whom died of illnesses.
It is
a fact that many Japanese officers were generally not well versed
with international law, treated soldiers and civilians without full
consideration, and that more than 20,000 Dutch people died from
illnesses.
However, Sankei article pointed out that the
Netherlands, an Allied prosecutor in the post-war trials, tried
suspected Japanese war criminals and executed 226 of them,
constituting the largest number of executions by an allied nation.
Furthermore, the Dutch-Japanese Protocol was agreed upon in 1956,
according to which Japan made condolence payments to the Netherlands
as final settlement of war reparations.
The
Emperor is visiting the Netherlands to mark the quadri-centennial of
friendly relations between the two countries. To seek for "an
apology" at this occasion would only serve to drain good sentiments
out of both peoples. Or could it be that the two politicians need to
push up their popularity ratings through such ill-chosen
maneuvers?
The
harshness of the Dutch colonial administration is said to rank as
one of the two worst rules in world history, the other being the
governance of Congo under Belgium's King Leopold
II.
King
Leopold of Belgium became almost crazed with harvesting natural
rubber, and forced the indigenous peoples living upstream of the
Congo River to meet quotas for rubber sap. If any of them failed to
meet the requirement, then his hands were cut off by overseers.
Because of the punishment, the prows of boats that carried natural
rubber sap downstream were said to be decorated with hands big and
small, like gloves fluttering in the wind, as if they were spoils of
war. Meanwhile, upstream, in the woods, the natives who had lost
their hands suffered in writhing agony, receiving no medicine nor
medical treatment.
The
repressive Dutch rule in Indonesia, which ignored human rights, was
not much worse.
In the
West Indies, the Dutch implemented the infamous mandatory
cultivation law. In 1830, Holland was faced with huge fiscal burdens
because of Belgium's rebellion and independence, and sought to
improve its international balance sheet through colony management.
The Dutch sent in a new governor to Indonesia, and banned the
inhabitants of the island of Java from cultivating all agricultural
produce such as rice. Instead, the locals were ordered to plant
sugar cane, coffee, indigo, and other tropical commercial products
which would bring in huge profits if they were exported to
Europe.
The
new policy produced huge profits as expected, enabling Holland to
solve its enormous debt problem, as well as financing the railroad
system, and achieve industrial revolution. In other words, the
Netherlands succeeded in modernizing itself by sacrificing
Indonesia.
However, what happened to
Java?
The
farmers of Java, who were forbidden to cultivate such produce as
rice, suffered from terrible famine from 1843 to 1848. The situation
was so dire that the cultivation law was suspended momentarily, only
to be resumed again for mandatory cultivation of export products.
The exhaustion of Javanese villages has continued until the quite
recent past.
Although the time period is somewhat
different, Taiwan, which was a Japanese colony in 1944, had an
amazing 92.5 % of its children in schools, and almost a zero
illiteracy rate, according to ITO Kiyoshi.
(Taiwan, published by
Chuko Shinsho)
However, Holland did not bother to educate
Indonesians so they could all read and write. Only 25 people, out of
30 million in Java island, had received middle school education in
the first five years at the turn of the 20th century. Only four
provincial governors, out of over eighty, could read or write
Dutch.
Indonesia's first President, Sukarno, once
exiled by the Dutch for eight years because of his pro-independence
activities, wrote in his autobiography that the average life
expectancy of an Indonesian was 35 years during the days of Dutch
colonial rule, which had increased to 55 after twenty years of
independence. He also wrote that there were no doctors or
pharmacists before independence, as compared to 5,000 doctors and
more than 500 pharmacists and 4,000 health clinics for mothers in
the 1960s.
Such
is the ignominious record of Dutch colonial administration. The
Dutch are demanding the Emperor for an apology for past history, yet
their Queen Beatrix who visited Indonesia in 1995 said not a word of
apology for past history.
Surely
the term "Dutch account" is not a selective procedure of taking into
account what are convenient of one's history. Originally, it must
have meant fair and equitable behavior for both
sides.
Note : This is a
translation of an opinion column that appeared in
Sankei Newspaper on Feb.11,
2000.
| 