The murder of the parlementaire Mas Soemo Widjojo was the killing, in the cruellest fashion, of the old and respectable Javanese chief who on 23 December 1873 had gone out, unarmed and provided with a white flag, as parlementair (truce-bearer, negotiator) from the camp of the second Atjeh expedition to the Sultan of Atjeh, carrying general van Swieten’s peace offer before the bombardment of the Atjehsche kraton was opened. According to the account given by Verstege in 1886 — following the published materials of the war — this was the deed by which the Atjehsche volksaard (national character) answered the Dutch commander’s appeal to European law of war, and it has stood since as one of the emblematic events of the war.
The mission
When general van Swieten, bound by his own interpretation of the European law of nations and war custom, felt obliged before opening the bombardment of the Kraton to make an offer of peace, he sent Mas Soemo Widjojo — an aged and respectable Javanese chief who accompanied the expedition — as negotiator, unarmed, with a white flag, with this peace offer to the Sultan. The general had already, in his letter of 1 December 1873 to the Sultan, given the memorable advice drawn from the “custom among the civilised nations”, and had asked that his messengers should be kindly received and their letters read. Hardly arrived at the enemy, however, the truce-bearer was with his followers taken prisoner and put in chains.
The martyr’s death
A few days later Widjojo was put to death in the cruellest manner, in the presence of Panglima Polim, of other chiefs and of many lesser Atjehers: his hands and feet were bound across, and then the old man’s head was twisted round. His three followers managed some days later to escape when they were given notice that they too would be killed the next day; one of them, overtaken in his flight, held under water, pierced through with spear-thrusts and then thrown for dead into a pit, came round and continued his flight, but died after his return of the wounds inflicted on him. Van Swieten, in his complaint to the Sultan of 2 January 1874, held him responsible for the consequences: “Is het dan de wil van Uwe Hoogheid, dat Uw land geheel verwoest wordt? Ik ben beschaamd, dat Uwe Hoogheid met mijnen zendeling en met mijne brieven zoo onheusch heeft gehandeld. Ik kan nu niemand meer vinden, die een brief naar den Kraton wil brengen” (“Is it then Your Highness’s will that your country be wholly destroyed? I am ashamed that Your Highness has dealt so unkindly with my messenger and my letters. I can now no longer find anyone who will carry a letter to the Kraton”). More than six years later, at the recollection, van Swieten wrote in De Waarheid: “Het is geweest eene wreede daad, eene verkrachting van het oorlogs- en volkenrecht, tot dusverre steeds geeerbiedigd door alle volken van den Archipel” (“It was a cruel deed, a violation of the law of war and nations, until then always respected by all peoples of the Archipelago”).
See Also
- Mas Soemo Widikdjo
- Jan van Swieten
- Panglima Polim
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873-1874)
- Kraton of Aceh
- 1873
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 17-18. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.