The killing of Toekoe Tjoet Machmoed Lam Tenzah was an incident of the Atjeh-oorlog which took place on 16 May 1897, in which the Acehnese chief Toekoe Tjoet Machmoed Lam Tenzah was killed together with his wife, his children and seven followers while they slept, by volleys fired through the thin walls of their dwelling. It was cited by H. van Kol in the Atjeh debate of 16 November 1897 as a concrete instance of the demoralisation produced by the war.
The event
According to the account Van Kol drew from the Dutch weekly De Kroniek of 16 May 1897, one of these “heerschappen” — the sardonic term used in the source for Acehnese chiefs — was killed on that day with his wife and children and seven followers as they slept, “door salvo’s te geven door de dunne wanden der woning, tot elk geluid verstomde” — by giving volleys through the thin walls of the dwelling, until every sound was silenced.
The Kroniek reporter added the ironic phrase that the dead had thereby “een reiswijzer naar betere gewesten hadden verkregen” — obtained a guide to better regions.
Van Kol placed the incident immediately after the words attributed to Rutgers van Rozenburg about dividing fallen Acehnese in two “om hun entrée in den Turkschen Hemel te bemoeielijken,” and immediately before his statement that he would keep silence about still more abominable facts at his disposal, having had enough in these to point to the terrible demoralisation which followed from bloodshed.
Context
The killing belongs to the phase of the war that opened after the defection of Teuku Umar in March 1896, when Dutch operations in the valley of Groot-Atjeh shifted to the aggressive pattern of mobile columns, night surprises and the systematic pursuit of individual chiefs later defended in the chamber by Cremer as the present system. The technique described — surrounding a house at night and firing volleys through its walls — was the characteristic method of the overval or surprise attack on a sleeping kampong house.
The source gives no further detail of the location of Lam Tenzah, the composition of the Dutch detachment, or the name of its commander.
Aftermath in the chamber
The Minister of Colonies Cremer did not address this case specifically. Replying to the general charge of cruelty, he stated that women and children watching a fight from a distance might be struck, since one no longer had control of a bullet once fired, but that of cruelties committed in cold blood he had heard nothing and did not believe they had been committed. Kuyper declared that he fully endorsed Van Kol’s condemnation of cruelties “indien metterdaad die feiten zoo zijn,” and that no member of the chamber and no Dutch Minister of Colonies would hesitate to condemn such acts if concretely and clearly proved.
See Also
- Toekoe Tjoet Machmoed Lam Tenzah
- Atrocities in the Aceh War as alleged in the Tweede Kamer (1897)
- H. van Kol
- De Kroniek
- Rutgers van Rozenburg
- J. T. Cremer
- Atjeh debate in the Tweede Kamer (16-17 November 1897)
- 16 May
- 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. 10–11.
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.