New Dutch exhibition examines Indonesia's independence

A new exhibition opens this week at the Dutch national museum that examines the violent birth of the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia

AMSTERDAM -- Video of Dutch troops overseeing the torching of houses in an Indonesian village plays in one room of the Rijks Museum's new exhibition, while a few meters away, a baby's clothes sown from book covers — the only scraps of cloth the mother could find — are laid out.

The exhibits cast into stark relief two different elements of suffering as part of the Dutch national museum's new exhibition “Revolusi! Indonesia Independent” that presents a multifaceted view of the violent birth of the Southeast Asian nation from the ashes of World War II and three centuries of colonial rule.

The exhibit of baby clothes "doesn’t show the violence directly, but it’s this indirect impact of the violence that’s been shown by these objects,” the museum's director, Taco Dibbits, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The conflict is shown through the eyes of 23 witnesses ranging from a young Indonesian boy with a box of water colors covertly painting troops movements in his hometown to famed photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson's iconic images of President Sukarno being sworn into office at the sultan's palace in Yogyakarta on Dec. 17, 1949.