Indonesian war crime widows sue Dutch government

This video says about itself:

The Rawagede Massacre 1947, Karawang, Indonesia

Bloody massacre in Rawagede, Karawang (now Balongsari), West Java, Indonesia, on December 9, 1947. Dutch soldiers killed hundreds of male civilians when the Netherlands government at that time tried to reoccupy Indonesia again after the Nazis and Japan surrendered and World War II ended. Tragic story that lingered to this day as the massacre was brought into court in the Hague and the widows (only a few of them left) were being assisted by local lawyers and good Samaritans to be compensated for their lost husbands, parents and children.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Indies widows will go to court after all

This title refers to the “Dutch East Indies“, the name the Dutch government used for Indonesia when it was a Dutch colony. However, the war crimes referred to in this news item occurred after the independent Republic of Indonesia had been proclaimed in 1945; and the Dutch government tried to crush that independence with military force.

Update: Friday 27 Dec 2013, 06:56

17 widows of men who were executed by Dutch troops in the late 1940s will go to court to enforce compensation from the Dutch government. According to their lawyer, the government is not fulfilling its promise to work at these cases energetically.

In September, the widows applied for a new scheme, which was based on the compensation for widows in South Sulawesi and of the massacre in Rawagadeh. They receive a compensation of 20,000 euros.

Although the scheme was supposed to accelerate other cases, the case of these 17 very aged women is not advancing at all.

‘Silence is the best solution’. The military versus the media in the Netherlands East Indies 1945-1949. This study surveys the Dutch (military) strategy versus the media, during the conflict with the Republic of Indonesia between 1945 and 1949. The Dutch (military) information services in Batavia had been slow to establish itself, and only a limited number of Dutch reporters and photographers were located in the capital. There was talk of embedded journalism; the majority of Dutch reporters stayed mostly in their comfort zone, never left their hotels in the centre of Batavia, visited receptions and press conferences and received their information via the diplomatic circuit, from briefings and the communiqués issued by the military and government information services. They were frequently hindered in their newsgathering, fact checking and the reporting of both sides, and if they did travel into the relatively unsafe conflict areas on Java and Sumatra they were accompanied by press officers: here.

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