Atjeh-moord

The Atjeh-moord — the Aceh murder, the Acehnese murder-attack — was the colonial army’s term for the Acehnese practice of the lone attack: the djahat’s attack on a colonial soldier or official, conducted in the expectation of the paradise-death. In Oost-Indisch Journael by Merac (1947), the Atjeh-moord is the subject of Musket’s Sloebers prologue: the proposal to mutilate the fallen perpetrator of an Atjeh-moord — “by cutting off his arms and legs, or by beheading him” — and the prang sabil against which the colonial army tried to defend by “burying fallen opponents together with a pig.”

The proposal to mutilate the perpetrator

“Long ago there must have been, in all earnest, a proposal to counter the Atjeh-moorden by mutilating the finished-off perpetrator — for example by cutting off his arms and legs, or by beheading him.” Long ago there must have been, in all earnest, a proposal to counter the Atjeh-moorden by mutilating the fallen perpetrator — for example by cutting off his arms and legs, or by beheading him. “Also in the years of the Aceh War this means was recommended to keep the enemy from the prang sabil, the holy war.” Also in the years of the Aceh War this method was recommended to keep the enemy from the prang sabil, the holy war.

Burial with a pig

“Burying fallen opponents together with a pig was considered a proven means to force the Atjeher, via his religious conceptions, into submission to the Geumpenie.” Burying fallen opponents together with a pig was considered a proven means to force the Atjeher, via his religious conceptions, into submission to the Geumpenie — the colonial government. The burial with a pig — an unclean animal in Islam — was the colonial army’s attempt to deny the djahat the paradise-death: the djahat who was buried with a pig could not achieve paradise.

The goal of the perpetrator

“With all this one intended to set an example, for the perpetrator of an Atjeh-moord wanted, after all, to become partaker of the delights of Paradise, and all his effort would have been in vain if he were either beheaded or buried together with an unclean animal.” With all this one intended to set an example, for the perpetrator of an Atjeh-moord wanted, after all, to partake of the delights of Paradise, and all his effort would have been in vain if he were either beheaded or buried together with an unclean animal. The goal of the perpetrator of an Atjeh-moord was the paradise-death — and the colonial army’s proven method was to deny the perpetrator the paradise-death through mutilation or burial with a pig.

The contest in cruelty

“In those raw days of yore, much happened that one would seek in vain in the military regulations. This and that gave rise to a contest in cruelty. It happened, for example, that the corpse of a great band-leader — whom one had long pursued in vain before laying him low — was paraded by the whole troop: that is, each in his turn gave it a cut with the klewang. In reprisal, the enemy killed captured soldiers and forced labourers in a gruesome manner, or mutilated them.” In those raw days of yore, much happened that one would seek in vain in the military regulations. This and that gave rise to a contest in cruelty. It happened, for example, that the corpse of a great band-leader — whom one had long pursued in vain before laying him low — was paraded by the whole troop: that is, each in his turn gave it a cut with the klewang. In reprisal, the enemy killed captured soldiers and forced labourers in a gruesome manner, or mutilated them. The contest in cruelty is the book’s — and the colonial memory’s — marker of the old days of the Atjeh-moorden: the escalating brutality between the colonial army and the djahat.

Significance

The Atjeh-moord is significant in Oost-Indisch Journael as the colonial army’s term for the Acehnese practice of the lone attack — the djahat’s assault undertaken in the expectation of the paradise-death. The book argues that the colonial army’s countermeasures — mutilation and burial with a pig — were intended to deny the perpetrator the paradise-death, and that the Atjeh-moorden ultimately gave rise to a mutual contest in cruelty. The Atjeh-moord thus serves as the book’s marker for both the djahat’s pursuit of paradise-death and the colonial army’s brutal response.

Du Croo’s explanation

These murders, du Croo argued, “can and must be explained from the emotional disposition of the Acehnese, from his conviction that whoever falls as a martyr, a witness of the faith, is awaited in the hereafter by immediate paradise, and… from the spiritual and economic dislocation resulting from nearly thirty-five years of war.”

The mechanism turned on the concept of maloe — embarrassment, shame, being at a loss. During the fierce general struggle the emotional Acehnese who felt himself disappointed in his domestic or married life, in his family, his life-wishes, his social existence or his relation to his chief or fellow villagers — who had thus become maloe — found the solution to his difficulties close at hand and immediately available: he joined a band. “Through and with that band he could avenge himself; by becoming a band member he made good again what he had done wrong, and he could moreover die as a martyr in the struggle against the unbeliever.”

That band system had by 1913 been rooted out. “And with that band system the readily available solution disappeared” — precisely at a time when the long years of struggle in the rimba had estranged countless younger and older Acehnese from the quiet existence of farmer and cattle-keeper and had increased their instability. Du Croo noted that there were then far more cases of mental derangement and insanity in Atjeh than in the rest of the Indies. Those unbalanced men now sought the new solution to disappointment, difficulty and fierce emotion, when they felt themselves maloe, “in the killing of an entirely arbitrary unbeliever and in becoming a martyr in that way after all.”

The recorded cases, 1913–1919

March 1913: the controleur of Idi and an accompanying official are attacked with a parang by an Acehnese and both wounded; “the perpetrator refused to speak and died that same evening in hospital.”
June 1913: a fourteen-year-old boy armed with a rentjong forces his way into the canteen at Samalanga and attacks the station master who happened to be there.
July 1913: two Acehnese armed with knives run amok at the station at Bireuën; two non-commissioned officers are killed and two soldiers wounded, because their chief had refused them permission to travel to Koeala Simpang.
10 October 1913: the murder of overste Scheepens at Sigli.
September 1913: the murder of a train conductor, in which the perpetrator also lost his life. “The hot-tempered and impulsive young Acehnese had been thwarted by his parents in his marriage plans, felt himself thereby shamed before his village, thought he could live no longer, but decided to stab an unbeliever first… any unbeliever at all, whom he would of course meet at the tram halt.”
May 1914: an Acehnese attacks the sentry at Lam Meulò, out of shame because his mother had squandered his paternal inheritance and begun a love affair with her own son-in-law. “So: shame, and therefore a murder.”
December 1914: two young Alassers force their way into the Moesapat hall at Koeta Tjanè, wound controleur Christan and some oppassers, and are laid low; three Alassers attacked the bivouac guard in March 1915 trying to free the arrested suspected instigator, costing the guard two killed and two wounded. The investigation finally showed the attack on Christan to have been a purely personal act of revenge and the suspected Kedjoerön of Bambél entirely innocent.
January 1915: the murder of a Chinese at Sigli.
June 1915: the murder of onderluitenant Müssig at Tangsé, a personal act of revenge; a light wounding of the officier van gezondheid De Vos at Lho’ Soekon during vaccination, the perpetrator being killed by bystanders; and the wounding of a tram overseer at Pantòn Laboe by an Acehnese woman.
1916: an attack on the tram clerk Beets and his wife, Beets dying of his wound; the assailant was seized and sentenced to death. Attacks on soldiers occurred repeatedly, at tram halts and on the keudé’s; “some assailants proved to be insane or feeble-minded.”
1917: a leper at Lho’ Soekon murders the officier van gezondheid dr. J. Ph. Andriesse during examination; sentenced to death. At Langsa an Acehnese in a fit of religious mania attacks Messrs Jahnke and Roberecht; the first dies.
11 March 1918: an attack at Lho’ Soekon on the Civil Authority, lieutenant Schouten, who soon recovered; the perpetrator laid low.
12 February 1919: an attack at Koeta Radja on Hense, manager of the Oranjehotel and a former marechaussée sub-officer, who lost his life; the perpetrator had acted from religious fanaticism and from disappointment in his married life.

Relation to attempted resistance

“In the same way virtually all attempts at renewed resistance can be explained.” When such an outburst came it seemed, especially to outsiders, alarming because inexplicable: the political situation was very favourable, the harvest promising, the heerendienst properly performed, taxes normal, the chiefs blameless, school attendance improving — “and then suddenly: the blow!” But patient investigation by someone who knew the country, the people and the family relations, and who possessed the population’s confidence, as a rule brought the explanation fairly soon: an intellectual author who felt himself maloe over some trifle, and a number of executants in the same case or who dared not or could not refuse — itself a case of fear of becoming maloe.

Such flare-ups were almost always declared in the press and by “the talk of the town” more important and more alarming than they were: “nowhere (not even in 1925–1926) did that resistance attain an extension of any significance; nowhere did it spread to other districts in such a way that one could speak of a contagion, an “infection”.”

Significance (du Croo, 1943)

The Atjeh-moord was the residual violence of a pacified province, and du Croo’s analysis of it — as a social and psychological rather than a political phenomenon, produced by the destruction of the bendewezen that had formerly absorbed such men — is one of the most sustained pieces of interpretation in his book. He noted that the murders continued long after the period he described: the last he lists occurred in 1919, but “they still occurred even twenty years later.”

Sources

Atjèh and the War with Japan, by Dr. A. J. Piekaar, translated from the Dutch original Atjèh en de oorlog met Japan (1949) (‘s-Gravenhage/Bandung: N.V. Uitgeverij W. van Hoeve; English edition), Chapter I § 1, Chapter VI.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 365, 380, 381, 383, 388.

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Distinctive form of murder: premeditated, selective, in cool blood. The perpetrator electively chooses victim and place; acts after careful weighing of chances; hopes to fall himself so as to ascend directly to heaven. Contrasted with amok (which is a psychosis). Often motivated by levensmoheid (life-weariness), despair (esp. among lepers), revenge, shame. Religious motivation alone is rare. Figures 1910-1938: average ~4 per year (75% of listed cases, after deducting 25% amok cases).

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 365, 380, 381, 383, 388.

Source

Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), chapter Sloebers.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter XII, pp. 119–123.

tags	concept, military-term, acehnese, resistance, aceh, violence, colonial, achehnese, religion, psychology, 20th-century
aliases	Aceh murder, Acehnese murder-attack, Atjeh-moorden, Atjeh murder, Acehnese murder, Atjeh murders, Atjèh murder, Atjèh-moord, Atjèhnese assassination

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