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- Title
How a violent past necessitates self-exploration. The Indonesian war of decolonization(1945- 7 949) and the debate about war crimes on radio and televisio.
- Authors
van den Akker, Chiel
- Abstract
In 2005 the Dutch government for the first tim e denounced the position it held during the Indonesian war o f decolonization (1945-1949). In Jakarta the then Minister o f Foreign Affairs, Ben Bot, declared that in those years the Dutch had been'on the wrong side o f history'. Until then Dutch governments had been reluctant to publicly address the war and the crimes committed therein, even though these crimes had been brought into the open from 1969 onward in radio and television broadcasts. This article argues that as long as the violent past is not rethought, that past keeps on being news. Individuals may rethink their past in private. Governments have to do it publicly. Rethinking the past, Eelco Runia argued, is addressing the question, who are we that this could have happened?The Dutch do not need to rethink their past to reconcile themselves w ith the Indonesians, but to reconcile themselves w ith themselves.
- Subjects
DECOLONIZATION; BOT, Ben; CRIME; TELEVISION broadcasting; RADIO broadcasters
- Publication
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 2019, Vol 132, Issue 1, p3
- ISSN
0040-7518
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5117/TVGESCH2019.1.002.AKKER