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We are here because you were there
In preparation for the conversation with Prime Minister Rutte I already received a lot of questions. ‘How does that work, then, the personal invitation? You’re a museum director, aren’t you?’ And: ‘What are you actually going to say about the first generation of Moluccans who arrived in 1951?’ The invitation said that the government wanted to reflect on the treatment of that generation after their arrival. At the table it soon became clear that the context of that arrival had to be drawn more broadly.
The column continues below the photo.
Open and interested
I experienced the conversation with State Secretary Van Ooijen (VWS) and Prime Minister Rutte (AZ) as open and interested. Including where matters were discussed such as apologies to the Moluccan community, but not without an accompanying package or programme, the RMS government as a conversation partner, and investigating the role of the Dutch government with regard to the decolonisation of Indonesia, with a focus on the Moluccan community. A full report has been compiled by Joaniek Vreeswijk (Niet Mijn Aankomst), and I contributed input for this report.
‘We are here because you were there,’ I said at one point at the table. Silence. ‘Yes, but we cannot undo that any more,’ was the Prime Minister’s answer. ‘Nor does that need to happen,’ I thought to myself. What we can do is make sure that Moluccan perspectives on this history come to play a more important and visible role in, among other things, the school curriculum. That is what the promised follow-up conversations should be about.
Also read his other columns: At the table!, Halfway through 2022, Looking back & focus for 2022, A museum without a museum
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