The Atjehsche moorden — the Atjehnese murders — were the assaults by Atjehnese individuals on European or Christian targets in the post-pacification period, which long aroused the concern of government and community in the Gouvernement Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden. The phenomenon is treated by Broersma in Verkenningen in Atjeh in connection with the frequent insanity in Atjeh, which had in recent years attracted attention, and with the question whether the two were connected.
The Investigation by the Advisor for Inlandse Affairs
The frequent insanity in Atjeh led to an investigation by the government’s advisor for Inlandse affairs, from which it appeared, among other things, that in several cases the Atjehnese, falling into despair through misfortune and disappointment, decided to end his life in such a way that he would inherit the happiness of the hereafter. Then he undertook a prang sabil on his own account — a war on the way to Allah — and fell upon the kafirs in blind excitement at the place where he could expect much resistance, for example at stations and at bivouacs.
The Investigation of 1920
Another investigation was instituted in 1920, by an expert in mental diseases, into the necessity of a lunatic asylum in Atjeh. When he came to the gewest, the government could give him a list of about 1.100 people who were considered insane. The investigator gained the impression that the actual number must be greater. His finding was that malaria, leprosy, syphilis and yaws afflicted the people, who were already weakened by child-marriage, internecine wars and war against the Dutch authority. The evil of opium was added; the evil of alcohol is added — the latter the Atjehnese can take over from the many Klings who are in the gewest. The degeneration among the people’s children shows itself in many symptoms: paralyses, idiocy, feeble-mindedness, insanity, falling-sickness, nervous debility. The investigator did not fail to point out that the mental decline comes partly at the cost of the Atjehnese physical decline. The Atjehnese people has lost much of its strength, it is decadent. Old women, who have known the men-folk otherwise, sometimes reproach the men: that they play football and visit the cinema but lack the pride of the fathers.
Significance
The Atjehsche moorden are the type-phenomenon of the post-pacification crisis of Atjehnese society — the conjunction of despair, religiously-motivated violence and mental degeneration that the colonial government had to manage in the early civilian period. The phenomenon is also the political condition of the government’s decision to fit up the former military hospital at Sabang for the admission of lunatics, and of its refusal to build a central institution at Lam Teumet in Seulimeum for reasons of economy.
See Also
- Prang sabil
- Krankzinnigheid in Atjeh
- Sabang
- Lam Teumet
- Seulimeum
- Kota Radja
- Lho Seumawe
- Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)
- 1920
- 1922
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), chapter XV, ‘Groot-Atjeh’, pp. 104–105.
Source
Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), passim.