Working on a shared understanding: President Jokowi met Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Merdeka Palace, Jakarta, in 2016. — Cabinet Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia
IT is simply a coincidence that Japanese Emperor Naruhito expressed his remorse over his country’s three-year occupation of Indonesia and emphasised the importance of cooperation in dealing with climate change and other global challenges on his visit to Jakarta, one day after Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte spoke in the Dutch Parliament recognising Aug 17, 1945 as the Independence Day of its former colony Indonesia.
Indonesians, however, wonder why the Dutch could not accept the fact that we proclaimed our independence on that date nearly eight decades ago, and they tried in vain to seize our freedom in a four-year bloody war. From their perspective, the Netherlands only agreed to withdraw from Indonesia after winning a huge ransom payment from their former colony on Dec 7, 1949.
