Citation

Yaeger CH. Terrorism 1990; 13(3): 215-226.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1990)

DOI

10.1080/10576109008435832

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The campaign of terror being waged by the South Moluccan terrorists against the liberal government and society of Holland is a bizarre holdover from the European colonial era in Asia. The South Moluccan terrorists are, for the most part, angry and frustrated young men and some women who are fighting for a homeland that they have never seen, and will probably never see in their lifetime. They are the sons and grandsons of South Moluccan Indonesian soldiers who served the colonial Dutch empire in the Dutch East Indies during the civil war that raged directly after World War II when Holland tried to reclaim her empire. The defeated Moluccan soldiers and their families migrated to Holland in 1951 for temporary refuge--until a "South Moluccan Republic" could be established and they could return to their island paradise. Their children, nurtured on stories of their lost homeland, have taken up the hopeless cause of their parents--to use terror as a vehicle to force Holland, who betrayed them, and Indonesia, who denied them, in their quest to return to their island fantasyland.

Language: en