Name Pangeran Soejono | Role Politician | |
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Died 1943, London, United Kingdom | ||
Pangeran Adipati Soejono (Tulungagung, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), March 31, 1886 – London, United Kingdom, January 5, 1943) was a Dutch politician and the only Indonesian minister who has ever seated in a Dutch cabinet meeting.
Contents
Career
Scion of a Javanese regent family; he himself was regent in Pasururan and member of the People's Council (Volksraad) and the Council for the Dutch East Indies (Raad van Indië). Just before the fall of the Dutch East Indies, he escaped, along with Hubertus van Mook, to Australia. Van Mook was appointed Minister of Colonies in the war cabinet in London and Soejono was his top adviser. Soejono was appointed on June 6, 1942 as minister without portfolio. It was the intent to explain to the Americans that the Netherlands conducted no traditional reactionary colonial policy.
Self-determination issue for Indonesia
Soejono advised Queen Wilhelmina on matters of the constitutional relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia after the Second World War. In October 1942, he wrote two notes in which he explained that a lot of Indonesians did not want to start political relations with the Netherlands after the war. To start political relations after the war with the Indonesians the Netherlands should respect the self-determination of Indonesia. During a cabinet meeting in October 1942 Soejono performed up to three times a passionate appeal to his colleagues, but nobody wanted to support him, not even the Ministers of the Dutch Labour party SDAP.
In the speech of Queen Wilhelmina of December 7, 1942 no self-determination was offered to the Indonesian people. Only more participation would come after the war.
"I imagine, without prejudice to the government conference's advice, that they will focus on a National Association, which the Netherlands, Indonesia, Suriname and Curaçao will have participated together, while each in itself, its own autonomy in internal affairs and drawing on their own, but together with the will to assist, will represent. It will be difference of treatment based on race or national character have no place, but will only have the personal ability of citizens and the needs of different populations for the decisive policy of the Government."
Dead
On January 5, 1943 Raden Adhipatti Ario Soejono died, 56 years old. Indonesian sailors from the Royal Netherlands Navy attended his funeral in London
His son Irawan Soejono who served in the Dutch resistance was shot by German troops in 1945 in the Netherlands.