Moluccan diaspora

The Molucca diaspora refers to the dispersal of populations who lived in the South Moluccan Islands (now Maluku), which falls into two major parts.

In the early 1950s, the Netherlands Government transported approximately 12,000 Moluccan members of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) and their families to the Netherlands, at the end of its approximate 230 years of colonial rule of the Dutch East Indies. They were discharged on arrival and temporarily housed in camps until it was possible for them to return to the Moluccan Islands. Although a South Moluccan Republic (Republik Maluku Selatan, RMS) was declared on 25 April 1950, the self-rule movement was defeated by the Indonesian military (TNI) and many RMS followers left their homeland and formed a "government in exile" in the Netherlands in 1966.

In 1975, Moluccan extremists were responsible for hijacking a Dutch train and taking passengers hostage. A similar incident took place in 1977.

A second wave of diaspora occurred during the Maluku civil war from 1999 to 2003, which caused over 300,000 people to leave the country. Most of the refugees moved to the United States, Netherlands, France, Australia, Brazil, Portugal and Austria.