On Surabaya incident
Allow me to make a belated comment on the May 7 letter from David Jardine titled Historical records.
In those "revolutionary days" perhaps only members of the fledgling army units, hastily formed, were aware of the basic rules of the humanitarian law, in a vague and rudimentary way. But what could one expect from those who had only minimal education, if any at all? Beside the regular army, there were also the rag-tag irregulars and common people who formed an angry crowd.
Most possibly, to them, ready with newly gained independence, the RAF military airplane was on a hostile military mission to attack the young republic and (by some miracle) was brought down. What ensued after the "capture" of the aircraft was a double tragedy: they were not aware that the victims, though armed, were not their real enemy.
By contrast, Capt. Raymond "Turk" Westerling and his men were professional soldiers belonging to the long-established Royal Dutch Army (KNIL). They were supposed to be well aware of the basic rules of humanitarian law.
In an interview carried in a Dutch newspaper of Sept. 3, 1983 (De Telegraaf, if my memory is correct) retired Capt. Westerling admitted that he preferred shooting his victims himself because he did not want his men to bear the burden of guilt.
After the violence that befell the local population of Chinese origin in June 1945 in West Java, the accident (or the incident) took place during a "transitional" period, when law and order authorities in many regions and locations were evidently barely in existence, or effective, if at all.
Communal conflict, whatever the origin or background, could easily explode into wide-spread violence, even in times of peace and often for trivial reasons, let alone in a war-time situation, when neutrality, for instance, even if only perceived, would be regarded as suspect.
So it is or it was the "provocateurs" or instigators of the violence who should be held responsible for the accident and not the local authority who, for practical purposes, was not functioning. Otherwise, the blame for the incident should, in the final analysis, be put on those who tried to reimpose colonial rule in Indonesia.
SOEGIO SOSROSOEMARTO
Tangerang, Banten