Ex-Dutch police officers seek recognition after Prime Minister’s apology to Moluccans

Former police officers who were told to use violence against Moluccans in the 1970s are now seeking official recognition for the trauma they endured during the service, de Volkskrant reports. The news comes a month after Prime Minister Rob Jetten apologized to the Moluccan community for its mistreatment in the Netherlands.

The former officers hope the government's admission that its approach toward the Moluccans was wrong will extend to them. "Let them then also give that same recognition towards the police," an ex-officer told NOS.

The officers carried out repressive actions amid a hostage crisis at the Assen provincial house, where two people died, and a train hijacking at De Punt. A group of about 100 former officers from Drenthe has requested acknowledgment of the psychological toll they faced while implementing government policy.

"The policy was tit for tat," Ed Jissink, who worked as a brigadier with the police in Assen in the 1970s, told NOS. "The whole system was repression; the police were the bosses."

Jissink and his colleagues say they were ordered to crack down hard on even minor violations during initially peaceful demonstrations. They now argue that this approach, dictated from above, was often against their will and later backfired, fueling violence.

During one training exercise involving shooting at demonstrators, Jissink intervened. "I shouted, 'Stop!' We are not going to shoot at those people? Well, that became a whole discussion. Fortunately, the police then decided not to apply that exercise anymore."

Many Moluccan professional soldiers had fought alongside Dutch forces during Indonesia's war of independence from 1945 to 1949. After the war, Indonesia barred them from returning to the Moluccan Islands, viewing them as traitors.

In 1951, the Netherlands brought the Moluccan men and their families to the country. Upon arrival, they were discharged from military service and housed under wretched conditions, including in the former German concentration camps Westerbork and Vught.

The Moluccans sought Dutch support for an independent Moluccan state, the Republik Maluku Selatan (RMS), but that did not materialize.

John Wattilete, president of the RMS, expressed understanding for the former officers' call for recognition. "It is good that the agents raise this issue without detracting from the Moluccan suffering. After all, they too were used to solve a political and economic problem of the government."

Wattilete pointed to the Dutch government's reluctance to jeopardize relations with Indonesia. "That was the source of the conflict. This was portrayed as a public order issue, but there was no attention at all to the underlying problem. That was the promise that the stay in the Netherlands would be temporary and that the Moluccan people would be able to exercise the right to self-determination."

The National Police said it is taking the request seriously. Officials called it a poignant story that deserves a serious response.