The Dutch government has formally apologised for the mass killing of Indonesians during colonial occupation which ended in 1949.
The Dutch ambassador in Indonesia, Tjeerd de Zwaan, officially presented the state's apology at a Jakarta ceremony on Thursday.
"On behalf of the Dutch government I apologise for these excesses," De Zwaan said.
Special forces from the Netherlands carried out a series of summary executions in its former colony between 1945 and 1949, killing thousands.
In total, about 40,000 people were executed during the colonial era, according to the Indonesian government; however, Dutch figures mention only a few thousand.
South Sulawesi was the site of one of the worst atrocities committed by the Dutch in Indonesia.
On January 28, 1947, Dutch special forces executed 208 men on a field in front of a local government office.
Westerling executions
It was one of the many mass murders by notorious captain Raymond Westerling who was long considered a hero in the Netherlands.
Westerling and his troops held summary executions in tens of villages for a period of three months in a bid to wipe out resistance against Dutch colonisation. Neither he or his men were ever prosecuted.
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said the Dutch government suddenly seemed in a hurry to apologise for the atrocities that were committed 66 years ago.
"In a couple of months from now, the Dutch prime minister is visiting Indonesia and many have said it would actually be much more appropriate to issue the apology then. But suddenly they decided it had to happen today at the Dutch embassy and not in the places where these war crimes have taken place," Vaessen said.
"They chose the embassy because they want to apologies for a lot more than only what happened in South Sulawesi and other places. They are apologising for all the war crimes, which the Dutch merely call excesses," Vaessen added.
The Hague had previously apologised and paid out to the widows in individual cases but it had never said sorry or offered compensation for the victims of general summary executions.
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