The Brussels Conference of 1874 was the international conference on the laws of land warfare whose articles H. van Kol cited in the Tweede Kamer on 17 November 1897 as the standard by which the Dutch conduct of the Atjeh-oorlog must be judged and found wanting.
The article quoted
Van Kol read the following into the record: “il est interdit de mutiler ou de tuer un ennemi qui est hors de combat, et de déclarer d’avance qu’on ne fait pas de quartier, même si l’on ne le réclame pas pour soi-même.” — it is forbidden to mutilate or to kill an enemy who is out of the fight, and to declare in advance that no quarter will be given, even if one does not claim it for oneself. The pamphlet supplies the Dutch rendering in a footnote.
He introduced the citation with the words: “Enkele artikelen der Conferentie van Brussel van 1874 geven daartoe reeds gereede aanleiding” — some articles of the Conference of Brussels of 1874 already give ready occasion for it — the “it” being the pretext that any great power might find for intervening against the Netherlands, as North America was then finding against Spanje in Cuba.
Bearing on Atjeh
The two prohibitions bore directly on the specific charges Van Kol made. The prohibition on killing an enemy hors de combat bore on the killing of prisoners and on the alleged shooting of Njahim and of the aged Joed Mohmed Lamtengah; the prohibition on declaring in advance that no quarter would be given bore on the pencil note “er worden geen krijgsgevangenen gemaakt” that Van Kol attributed to Van der Heyden on the krijgsorder for the VI, XXII and XXVI Moekims; and the prohibition on mutilation bore on the practice discussed in the Tweede Kamer on 22 September 1896 in the exchange between Goeman Borgesius and the Minister Bergsma.
The 1874 date is also that of the comité-generaal of the Dutch chamber on the origins of the Atjeh war, cited by Cremer in the same debate — a coincidence of dates that gave Van Kol’s argument its edge: in the very year in which the civilised states were codifying the humane conduct of war, the Netherlands was secretly debating the justification of a war it was already conducting by the means the code forbade.
See Also
- Lois et coutumes de la guerre
- Atrocities in the Aceh War as alleged in the Tweede Kamer (1897)
- H. van Kol
- Krijgsorder for the VI, XXII and XXVI Moekims
- Comité-generaal van 1874
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 1874
- 1897
Source
Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898, uitgave van de Sociaaldemokratische Arbeiderspartij in Nederland (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br P95-178, pp. 62–63.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Atjeh in de Tweede Kamer: Debatten bij de behandeling der begrooting van Nederlandsch-Indië voor 1898 (Amsterdam: J. A. Fortuijn, 1897). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.