Archipelago of Death: The Brutality of Japanese and Dutch Counterinsurgency Operations in Indonesia

The conclusion of the Second World War brought the international community together to pursue justice following the bloodiest cataclysm in human history. The prosecution of Japanese war criminals during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East helped lay the blueprint for how crimes against humanity and other atrocities were defined and dealt with. Despite the Tokyo War Crimes Trials’ clear definitions of the permissible and illegal conduct of nations, the Netherlands perpetrated one of the most brutal and overlooked wars of the decolonization era. The Indonesian War of Independence began at the closure of the global catastrophe that raged for the past six years. The Dutch unlearned the lessons of the previous conflict, systematically trying to subjugate a people who no longer desired to live under the imperial yoke of the Netherlands. The Dutch forces in the East Indies (Indonesia) unleashed a wave of untold destruction and suffering upon their colonial subjects, typified by the “counterinsurgency” campaign of Captain Raymond Pierre Westerling in 1947. Westerling’s rampage in South Sulawesi represented the clearest and most blatant hypocrisy of the post-World War Two era as the Netherlands abandoned their promises to safeguard a humane world to retain their empire.