15 Jun 2016
This year it is 70 years ago that the historical Linggarjati Agreement was signed. Much has been published on this subject, and the video underneath recently came up. In this film, shooted during the Roundtable Conference between Indonesia and the Netherlands in 1949, in which the conditions of the Independence of Indonesia were negotiated, the chair of the Indonesian delegation proudly expresses that ‘Indonesia will be a well organized constitutional state and dignified member of the community of nations. We will and shall do this ourselves and we will and shall achieve our goals’.
The chair of the Dutch delegation states that ‘as the Netherlands during the Linggarjati Conference has declared the willingness to transfer the sovereignty to Indonesia, it now [1949] will embed the Indonesian Independence in the Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Once the transference of sovereignty has taken place, this never will be annulled. The ideals of freedom of the Indonesian people therefore irrevocably will be attained’.