August 17 - Indonesia’s Independence

As I live in The Netherlands since a few years, I thought I mention a bit of local history, well almost local, it�s not very often that one has the opportunity.

On August 17, 1945, two days after Japan�s surrender, A. Sukarno, the first president, and Mohammad Hatta declared the Independence of the Republic of Indonesia from its colonial power, the Netherlands.
The Indonesian had been a Dutch colony since the 16th and 17th centuries, and had been controlled throughout most of its colonial history by a private PLC, the �Dutch East India Company� (VOC).

During WW2, following Nazi-Germany�s occupation of The Netherlands, the Dutch Colony of Indonesia had been occupied by the Japanese. In the 20s first independence movements had appeared, and the Dutch had with difficulties suppressed two Communist revolts in the 30s.
The Dutch defeat in WW2 had boosted the Indonesian strife for Independence, and political groups in Indonesia were encouraged by the Japanese in their aims, and had, like Sukarno, to certain extent collaborated with their occupiers.

After Japans capitulation, the Dutch were handed back control over their colony by the Allied, but never again could exert their full authority again. The Dutch were met with armed resistance by Indonesian republicans at their return and reacted with, as it was euphemistically called �Police actions�, the employment of troops against the rebels.
The military conflict raged between 1945 and 1949 and left over 100.000 people dead.
Although briefly supported by British colonial troops present in the region, the Netherlands received no international support for its actions, on the contrary.
By the end of the 40s, the abilities of the Dutch to conduct a colonial war far away in South-East-Asia were finally overstretched, and on December 27, 1949, after negotiations in The Hague, the Dutch government, ceded sovereignty over its former colony to the Indonesian Republic.

The post-colonial troubles of Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, were far from over after 1949.
A further military conflict with The Netherlands arose in 1963 over the control of Western New Guinea, a territory that had been excluded by The Hague Treaty of 1949. It ended with another Dutch military and diplomatic defeat.

After an initial period of stability in Indonesia, General Suharto took power in 1967 in a military coup and soon established a brutal dictatorship, that killed up to 500.000 in suppression of an alleged Communist revolt, which lasted till 1998.
In 1974 the Indonesian army occupied East Timor, a few days after the Portugese had relinquished control over its former colony, against the wishes of its people who had declared East Timor's independence. Indonesia exerted a violent rule in East Timor, killing almost a third of its population that waged a guerilla war against its occupiers. Having come under massive international pressure, in 1999 Indonesia finally ceased control over East Timor that since then has become an independent country.
A similar pattern of oppression is currently repeated in Irian Jaha (Western New Guinea) where Indonesia refuses to recognize the demands of its population for self-government.



Indonesia and its neighbours


What else happened on this day?

1812   Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeated the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.

1987   Rudolf Hess, former deputy head of the NSDAP and the last surviving member of the Nazi leadership, died aged 93 at a Berlin hospital near Spandau Prison, having committed suicide by strangling himself. He has since become a martyr of Germany�s Neo-Nazis who claim that he had been murdered.

1996 Tens of thousands of dead rats were caught in fishermen�s nets in India�s northeast Assam state. It was speculated that a rare poisonous bamboo flower was the cause. (Olaf, my pet rat, asked me to put that in especially to remember that awful day)

1998 The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, admits having an �inappropriate� relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Full list:

Wikipedia