Dutch colonial time
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