VISLIB: DUTCH NATIONALS REPATRIATED FROM INDONESIA. FILM SHOWS DUTCH ASIANS LEAVING INDONESIA - INTEGRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.

Record ID: 647876

  • Title: VISLIB: DUTCH NATIONALS REPATRIATED FROM INDONESIA. FILM SHOWS DUTCH ASIANS LEAVING INDONESIA - INTEGRATION IN THE NETHERLANDS.
  • Date: 17th August 1972
  • Summary: 1. GVs & Svs Dutch nationals with baggage crowd onto wharf at prior harbour (4 shots) 0.16 2. SV & TV Repatriates board liner (2 shots) 0.22 3. MV 'Willem Ruys' name on ship 0.26 4. MV, TSV Repatriates up gangway and saying farewell (9 shots) 0.51 5. GV & MV PAN EXT. immigrant house in Holland (2 shots) 1.01 6. GV PAN..INTERIOR family in house 1.05 7. GV & SV Asian woman in garden (2 shots) 1.12 8. GV PAN, SV & SV.. children playing in housing settlement (3 shots) 1.26 9. SVs children playing and two girls on bicycle (3 shots) 1.44 10. GV, SV & CUs Asian children in school (4 shots) 1.55 11. GV PAN & CUs..Indonesian shop (4 shots) 2.11 12. GVs & CUs EXTERIOR Indonesian restaurants (6 shots) 2.34 13. GVs & SVs street scenes showing Asian people and mixed couple (5 shots) 2.46 14. SVs mixed couples and crowds near and on beach (5 shots) 3.04 15. GV Beach and pier 3.09 Initials ES. 1645 ES. 1720 Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 1st September 1972 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: INDONESIA & THE NETHERLANDS
  • Country: Netherlands
  • Reuters ID: LVA8P77AGLEWGXJIJL36PDZNUN5X
  • Story Text: The problem facing Britain in absorbing fifth thousand Asians now facing expulsion from Uganda had its parallel 15 years ago when The Netherlands had to accept about forty thousand Dutch nationals ordered to leave Indonesia.

    The circumstances are strikingly similar. In both cases, a large number of Asians who had spent all their lives in one country were ordered to leave at short notice because it was claimed they were damaging the economy.

    In the light of Britain's efforts to lessen the effects of a mass migration of Asian Ugandans, this Visnews production uses library film to illustrate how the Dutch Government coped with the problem.

    On December 5, 1957. the Indonesian Government of the late President Sukarno announced that fifty thousand Dutch nationals were to be expelled. Ostensibly, the reason was the dispute between Indonesia and The Netherlands over the status of Dutch New Guinea, now West Irian. But the Indonesian Government also claimed that the Dutch nationals -- who owned 70 per cent of the estates and private enterprises in Indonesia -- were causing inflation and high unemployment.

    In the twenty days following the order, ten thousand people, mainly women and children, left Indonesia for Holland. In the following even months about forty thousand people were transported to The Netherlands in ships and aircraft provided by the Dutch Government
    Thirty thousand of them were Eurasians of mixed parentage or Asians with Dutch nationality. Most had lived in tropical Indonesia all their lives and when the first arrivals landed in Holland in the bleak winter weather of January 1958, they faced life in a strange society.

    The Dutch Government immediately began a programme with the help of voluntary organisations to absorb the Asians economically and socially into the dutch community. They key was to disperse the migrant families across the Netherlands to prevent ghettos from forming.

    The Dutch Asians arriving in 1958 joined 84,000 others who had moved to The netherlands in the previous two years, anticipating the order to leave and an earlier group of 90,000 who shifted to The Netherlands when Indonesia gained independence in 1949. The last influx was in 1963, when 15,000 Dutch national left west Irian. In all, there are about 300,000 indigenous from former Dutch colonies living in The Netherlands.

    They have been successfully integrated into Dutch society - except for several thousand Amboinese who fled to Holland after an unsuccessful attempt to set up a republic on the island of Ambon in the South Moluccas group. This group has maintained its identity and its leaders still harbour thoughts of returning to Ambon.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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