Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946-1949

From 1946 to 1949, the Dutch prosecuted more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians for war crimes committed during the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies during World War II. They also prosecuted a small number of Dutch citizens for collaborating with their Japanese occupiers. The war crimes committed by the Japanese against military personnel and civilians in the East Indies included mass murder, murder, torture, mistreatment of prisoners of war and civilian internees, and forced prostitution. Beginning in 1946, the Dutch convened military tribunals in various locations in the East Indies to hear the evidence of these war crimes and imposed sentences ranging from months and years to death; some 25 percent of those convicted were executed for their crimes. The difficulty arising out of gathering evidence and conducting the trials was exacerbated by the ongoing guerrilla war between Dutch authorities and Indonesian revolutionaries and, in fact, the trials ended abruptly in 1949 when 300 years of Dutch colonial rule ended and Indonesia gained its independence.

Ancient history · Citizen journalism · Criminology · Ethnology · Guerrilla warfare · Human rights · Independence (probability theory) · Indonesian · International law · Military service · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Torture · War crime · War of independence · West indies · Asian Studies and History · History · Law

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