JAKARTA, Aug 16: The Netherlands said on Tuesday it was on the wrong side of history when it tried to maintain control of Indonesia after World War Two, and expressed regret for wrongs in the colonial period.

The gesture came on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Indonesia’s Independence Day, commemorating August 17, 1945 when nationalists issued a proclamation of the country’s freedom.

The move, allowed by lame-duck Japanese occupation authorities after Tokyo had already surrendered to the Allies, was not recognised by the Dutch, who only gave up their claim to Indonesia in 1949 after a hard-fought war with the nationalists in which many thousands died.

“In retrospect, it is clear that its large-scale deployment of military forces ... put the Netherlands on the wrong side of history,” Netherlands Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said in a speech on Tuesday night.

“A large number of your people are estimated to have died as a result,” he said.

“On behalf of the Dutch government I wish to express my profound regret for all that suffering.”

Bot is the first Dutch government member to attend Indonesia’s independence celebrations, in what he said was a gesture signifying “political and moral acceptance” of the 1945 date rather than December 1949 when the Dutch agreed to go.

The “Dutch must admit to ourselves, and to you the Indonesians, that during the colonial period ... harm was done to the interests and dignity of the Indonesian people,” he said.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said Jakarta welcomed the Dutch gesture “as recognition that we Indonesians became independent because we decided to be independent”, not “when the former colonial administrators went through the formalities of transferring power.”

The Netherlands presence in what is now called Indonesia began more than 300 years before the independence proclamation, but the gradual expansion and acquisition of power by the Dutch often met fierce resistance and rebellion.

Under Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, relations were cold to cool but gradually improved under his successor Suharto and subsequent governments.

Now a Dutch national leads an international team that will monitor a peace deal between the Indonesian government and separatist rebels in Aceh province.

Wirajuda said the bilateral relationship was strong, adding that Indonesia had never asked for an apology. “This is a matter that we have always left to their own conscience.” —Reuters