Indonesia: 80 years of "Independence"
Published on 16 August 2025
In Indonesia, independence day is celebrated on a grand and massive scale. In the Netherlands, it is largely met with silence.
On August 17th, 2025, the Republic of Indonesia celebrates 80 years of independence from its former occupier. It is the day that Sukarno and Hatta proclaimed the Proklamasi — the Declaration of Independence — and, as leaders of the revolution, declared Indonesia independent from the Netherlands. In Indonesia, this day is celebrated on a grand and massive scale. In the Netherlands, however, it is largely met with silence, with a handful of exceptions — such as the "80 Years Indonesia Merdeka" event organized by Amare in The Hague. This relative, and politically charged, silence is connected in part to the fact that the Netherlands held on to December 27th, 1949 as the officially recognized date of Indonesian independence until 77 years after the Proklamasi. It was only in 2022 that August 17th, 1945 was acknowledged as the "moral and political" date of Indonesian independence — though never legally for fear of legal and financial consequences.
Dutch foreign policy toward Indonesia, both during and after the Independence War (1945–1949), can be characterized as an ideologically driven effort to militarily, politically, and economically undermine and delegitimize President Sukarno and his government — and in doing so, the right to self-determination of 70 million Indonesians. Beyond the military aggression the Netherlands committed against a sovereign state and its citizens during the first and second "police actions" — as the colonial power euphemistically called the Independence War — Dutch foreign policy after the transfer of sovereignty in 1949 continued unabated in its pursuit of reasserting maximum economic and political colonial control. The most prominent examples include the Dutch refusal to transfer "Irian Barat" (West Papua) to the Republic of Indonesia in accordance with the Republic's wishes (the Netherlands only did so in 1962, under significant political and military pressure); the debt of 6.5 billion guilders imposed on Sukarno for Dutch "expenses incurred during the police actions"; Dutch support for separatist movements such as the RMS that undermined Sukarno and the Republic; and the Dutch refusal to honor the agreements of the Round Table Conference regarding development aid to Indonesia, which was almost entirely suspended.
Journalist and Indonesia expert Willem Oltmans writes about this in his memoirs: "We are miserable losers. We take out the loss of lost positions on the true liberators of the colonial territories under a torrent of false and unreasonable accusations. Sukarno's greatest achievement was consolidating the unity of Indonesia." (Willem Oltmans, Mijn vriend Sukarno, 1995.) When comparing the openly hostile position of the Dutch state and the Dutch (semi-)serious press with that of other European former colonial powers, the Netherlands comes off particularly poorly: "Nehru, imprisoned for fifteen years, went to Buckingham Palace. Patrice Lumumba to the Palace of Laeken. But Sukarno, standing next to Queen Juliana on the balcony of the palace on Dam Square, was simply not something the Dutch psyche could handle." (Willem Oltmans, In gesprek met Desi Bouterse, 1984.)
It was not until 1965, when Suharto came to power in Indonesia through a CIA-orchestrated coup, that the Netherlands was willing to legitimize the Indonesian presidency and its government. Suharto launched a mass slaughter of Sukarno supporters, who were conveniently branded as communists (Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method, 2020). "The Netherlands, which had never been able to stomach its defeat at the hands of Sukarno, hastened to lavishly court Suharto. Queen Juliana was sent on a state visit to lend prestige to the new right-wing government of mass murderers. After the half million dead in Indonesia in 1965–1966, the Netherlands rushed to increase development aid to Indonesia a hundredfold." (Willem Oltmans, In gesprek met Desi Bouterse, 1984.) From the moment Sukarno proclaimed Indonesian independence in 1945, The Hague consistently — politically, economically, and militarily — pursued a policy of undermining the Republic of Indonesia and its people.
It is difficult not to connect the consequences of Dutch historical foreign policy concerning Indonesia — and Sukarno specifically — to the current political state of the Indonesian economy and democracy, which appears to be experiencing a revival of the Orde Baru: the authoritarian-military Suharto regime. The 1965 coup was carried out by the American CIA, but the Netherlands was the principal driver of anti-Sukarno sentiment in Washington, with the explicit goal of achieving complete international political isolation of president Sukarno. The consequences of that policy are now history: Indonesia went from a socialist and nationalist political model under Sukarno to a pro-Western neoliberal model under Suharto — one that enabled maximum economic extraction from Indonesia by the United States and Europe.
It is equally difficult to separate the current political debate, and the Netherlands' reluctant position, on recognizing a Palestinian state from its historical policy toward Indonesia. The Hague — and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular — seems to be frozen in a permanent, ideological state of willful incomprehension when it comes to acknowledging the right to self-determination of both Indonesians and Palestinians.