Historical records

Historian Asvi Warman Adam (The Jakarta Post, May 4) raises some interesting questions in Can Indonesia sue the Netherlands for history?. He has, however, left out one or two important points.

While it would be wrong to trivialize Capt. Raymond Westerling's atrocities in South Sulawesi, it is also important for Indonesia to admit to some of its own in the same period.

I have for the past two years been collecting information for a book on the British presence here between 1945 and 1946, and in the process have found that there were many attacks on convoys of prisoners of war and other internees, women and children, released from the horror of Japanese camps in Java. These attacks were carried out by Indonesians.

In November 1945, four crew of a RAF Dakota plane forced to make an emergency landing in Bekasi en route to Semarang were murdered along with 18 Indian soldiers of the Mahratta Regiment. The British carried out an illegal reprisal, torching the nearest kampong and forcing hundreds of civilians to flee.

On Dec. 5, 1945, Lt. Ann Allingham of the British Red Cross Society was murdered, along with her lover Major Allison at Sungei Beremas, south of Padang. Four days later, the British carried out another illegal reprisal at Gaung. Allingham and Allison were buried in Menteng Pulo.

In June 1946, several hundred Chinese were massacred in Tangerang. Burning and looting of Chinese properties occurred at this and other locations in West Java during the same period.

These and many other incidents are on the record. It would be a falsification of history to ignore them, irrespective of whether Indonesia had a rightful claim to independence, which of course it did. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to see how financial compensation can be made for these acts. Nonetheless, the story should be told in as full a manner as possible.

DAVID JARDINE

Jakarta