Dutch colonial time
Coming home from a trip abroad I read all the newspapers delivered during my absence.
Then I read Mr de Jong's letter about Indonesia in The Jakarta Post on Sept. 27, 1994.
Everybody knows that small country Holland became rich because of the spices from Indonesia, and that Columbus wanted to find these spice-islands (the rest is history).
Sir, were any of your family among the 40,000 (forty thousand) people murdered by Mr Westerling during his killing tours through South Sulawesi? No! Because those victims were all Indonesians. Don't tell me you have never heard of him. You said yourself that you know 99 percent more about Indonesia than the pure Indonesians.
I was a little girl, 10 years old, in a crowd of students, who watched a massacre on the bus-station platform, an open area between the mosque, market area, cinema and school in Pare-Pare.
It happened during the 9 a.m. rest period. We saw 150 to 200 men and women taken from the crowded market and pushed together in the middle of that open area. Guarded by armed Dutchmen, they squatted on the ground, squeezed together, facing Westerling. Westerling sat in the front seat of an open Jeep (no doors, military green canvas roof), with one foot on the edge of the Jeep, holding a pistol on his knee. Then he started shooting at the poor people on the ground.
One woman got up, pointing her right first in the air and shouted: Merdeka! Then she sank down with a bullet in her eye. Westerling's men then "finished the job" with machine guns. In the meantime the school bell rang and we had to go return to our class-rooms, listening to the fire of machine guns.
One of the pupils, a boy named Jumadi, was crying because he'd seen his father, Pak Oyok, among the murdered. We all knew Pak Oyok, a timid man who used to help us repair our bikes. Since then our parents have taken Pak Oyok's nine children under their wing.
Westerling was never put on trial nor extradited; he died as a free citizen in the Netherlands.
I was living in Vienna when I read, in the newspaper, about his death. May God forgive him! I still suffer from horrific "flashbacks".
During 350 years of colonial rule, there were countless numbers of "Westerlings", some worse than others.
At school my six-year-old sister got a serious gash on the top of her head, caused by a big stone thrown by a Dutch girl, Vera. As her older sister, but still a little girl myself, I had to take her to the hospital. The two of us walked the 600 meters to the hospital on the hill. With every heart beat the blood gushed out of the open wound. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was dragging my little sister, covered in blood. No teacher (they were all Dutch) accompanied us to the hospital. My sister could have died on the way.
I myself, was badly treated by a Dutch boy, Paul (the son of the Head of Police), for no reason at all. I just happened to be passing by when he was in the mood for tormenting an inlander. I ended up with wounds on my arms and legs, and pain in my breast and head. The boy laughed with satisfaction.
The Dutch liked to torment the Inlanders because, out of fear, we never fought back. If people can do whatever they like, without being punished, they tend to get out of control and can become cruel. I still remember the poor Indonesians in the barb- wired courtyard of the Dutch police station, in the burning sun, standing on one leg, arms outstretched, till they dropped dead.
I don't consider you arrogant or stupid, Mr de Jong. I just feel pity and deep sympathy for you, because you don't know, just the same as other Dutch people; Have never experienced it yourself and cannot, and will not, believe that those horrific colonial practices ever really happened (like the Hongi-Tochten, etc.).
NANNY DJALI A.
Jakarta