Raymond Westerling
Raymond Pierre Paul Westerling was a Turkish military officer of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. He orchestrated a counter-guerrilla operation in Sulawesi during the Indonesian National Revolution after World War II and participated in a coup attempt against the Government of Indonesia in January 1950, a month after the official transfer of sovereignty. Both actions were denounced as war crimes by the Indonesian authorities. Born in the Ottoman Empire, despite his nickname, The Turk, Westerling was of mixed Dutch and Greek descent.
Early life
Raymond "The Turk" Westerling was born on 31 August 1919 in Istanbul. He was the second son of a Greek mother, Sophia Moutzou, and a Dutch dealer in antiques, Paul Westerling, whose family had lived there for three generations. He grew up speaking Greek, Turkish, French and English, and later wrote: "One of the few Western European languages that I didn't speak a word of was my mother tongue: Dutch." When World War II engulfed Europe in 1941, he went to the Dutch consulate in Istanbul and enlisted in the Royal Netherlands Army, much to his father's dismay.Military career
World War II
At the age of 22, in 1941, Westerling reported to the Dutch consulate in Istanbul as a volunteer for the Allies. He made his way to England, where he was conscripted into the Princess Irene Brigade in Wolverhampton, but was unhappy with garrison life. Westerling was among the first 48 Dutch soldiers to receive special training at the Commando Basic Training Centre in Achnacarry, on the barren, cold and uninhabited Scottish coast. He completed this training under William E. Fairbairn in July 1942. After his promotion to corporal, Westerling became the instructor for "Unarmed Combat" and "Silent Killing", in No. 2 Dutch Troop, No. 10 Commando. Within a year, he was teaching these skills to 10 Commando as a whole, and was also instructing in "Toughness Training". At his own request, he left this staff position and, in December 1943, he rejoined No. 2 Dutch Troop in India. In Ceylon, he underwent jungle training.In 1944, he was appointed sergeant for special services and was placed at the disposal of the Office of Special Assignments, an organization that trained agents for covert actions in the occupied Netherlands. To his disappointment, Westerling was never sent to the front line. Instead, he was appointed sergeant major instructor of the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten in the liberated southern Netherlands. On 10 March 1945 Westerling was seriously injured by a German attack with a V-1 Rocket. He was then taken to London. After healing, he was promoted to lieutenant by the head of BBO, General Van Oorschot, and sent to the Korps Insulinde on Malacca. From that corps he was deployed to Medan to act together with the British against Indonesian insurgents in and around Medan.
Indonesian National Revolution
North Sumatra
Westerling first came to Indonesia in September 1945, landing in Medan, North Sumatra, as an officer of the KNIL. Conditions there, as in much of Indonesia, were tense and chaotic after the end of the Japanese occupation. Since the end of World War II, parts of the Indonesian people were in an armed and diplomatic struggle against the Dutch for independence. To restore Dutch control in Medan, Westerling set up an intelligence network and a police force. Formally, Westerling was under British command, but he mostly went his own way. Within a few months, he was notable for his sense of intelligence, which laid the foundations for some important successes for the British forces. He had built a reputation for decisive and heavy-handed action where necessary by successfully rooting out enemies classified as rogue elements by the Dutch, which those most involved legitimized by referring to the brutal methods of the opposing side. This included methods such as his elimination of a gang leader who went by the name of Terakan and who was said to be responsible for attacks against European and Indonesian civilians in North Sumatra. In his memoirs he described his action as follows: "We planted a stake in the middle of the village and on it we impaled the head of Terakan. Beneath it we nailed a polite warning to the members of his band that if they persisted in their evildoing, their heads would join his own."Southern Sulawesi
In July 1946, Having completed his first assignment as a first lieutenant, Westerling took over the Depot Special Forces commando unit. Westerling's training of his unit was primarily based on his experiences with the British commandos. In September 1946, the DST, stationed at Batavia, numbered about 130 soldiers, a mix of Dutch war volunteers, and Indonesians. In December 1946, he received the instruction to eliminate the insurgency and to restore Dutch control in Sulawesi. That island - like other parts of the Dutch East Indies - was in the grip of a violent uprising that was characterised by the Dutch government and in the media as 'red-white terror'. Government authority had all but collapsed, economic life was paralysed, while people in doubt were pressurised to turn away from colonial authority. Guerilla fighters from Java had joined the local groups and government officials and members of the pro-Dutch Eurasian and Indo-Chinese community, were attacked and killed. The KNIL garrisons, stationed on the island, were not able to provide protection. Criminal gangs had free rein. This period of disorder entered the history books as the Bersiap era. All this thwarted the Dutch plan to prepare the state of eastern Indonesia for independence. Though according to the Enthoven Commission, there was no organised rebellion against Dutch authority at the time.After intensive consultations between the political leadership in Batavia and the Dutch army command, it was decided to deploy an extra battalion of troops and the DST led by Raymond Westerling. He was given a clear mandate and instructions to organise a counterguerrilla operation against the 'red-white terror'. Part of the mandate Westerling received from Colonel Henk de Vries, the operational commander on South Celebes, was the authority to exercise summary execution. In doing so, he was accountable to the operational commander on site and to the Allied Command Officer Major General Eduard Engles.
Westerling claimed that "pacifying" Southern Celebes without losing thousands of innocent lives could only be accomplished by instituting summary execution, on the spot, for suspected enemy fighters, who were generally executed. This became known as part of the "Westerling Method". Based on information received from his own informants or the Dutch military intelligence service, the members of the DST surrounded one or more suspected villages during night, after which they drove the population to a central location. At daybreak, the operation began, often led by Westerling. Men would be separated from women and children. From information obtained through spying and the local people, Westerling deemed certain people as terrorists and murderers. Based on this information they were shot. Persons who offered armed resistance were immediately killed. Afterwards, Westerling would install a new village leader and set up a village police force. All present would have to swear on the Koran that they would not follow in the path of the "terrorists". Finally, Westerling organised a new police force and appointed kampong boards that were made responsible for maintaining order. In 1954, the Van Rij/Stam committee characterised Westerling's actions as a "solemn" method, which would have made a deep impression on the population. Dutch historian Lou de Jong commented in his publication on Westerling's action: "There may have been guilty ones among those indicated as having aided the T.R.I.S. or other resistance groups, but surely there were innocent ones among them. Besides that: there was no judicial basis for these summary judicial bloodbaths – even in a state of war they did not exist." In the recent publication of Geersing, he claimed that the actions of Westerling were in conformity with the existing and applicable legal and military principles and regulations in those days.
The counter-insurgency operation started in December 1946 and ended in February 1947. According to Indonesian accounts, all this came at the cost of large numbers of casualties. In his book De Zuid-Celebes Affaire: Kapitein Westerling en de standrechtelijke executies, Dutch revisionist historian Willem IJzereef claims that the actions of the DST cost about 1,500 Indonesian lives. About 400 of them were executed during actions led by Westerling himself, while the remaining 1,100 were killed during actions of his second in command. The responsibility for these executions was this second in command, as was stated by the Enthoven investigational committee. Another 1,500 deaths could be added as a result of actions of other KNIL units. Approximately 900 Indonesians were killed by pro-Dutch police units and members of the village police. IJzereef believes that Indonesian resistance caused around 1,500 victims. In the report of the Enthoven Committee the 'red and white terror' is also held responsible for 2,661 cases of rampok and 555 cases of arson.
The violent period prior to Westerling's crackdown saw 1,200 Indonesian casualties in South Celebes from rival gangs, crime and political terror under the Republican banner. This, according to Westerling's sympathisers, justified the crackdown. This reading is endorsed by Mr B.J. Lambers, then the attorney-general's representative on South Celebes. Historians Rémy Limpach and Gert Oostindie also give the impression that Westerling's actions, if not directly ordered from on high, were at least condoned by the military and political authorities in Batavia. Bauke Geersing, in his 2019 study Captain Raymond Westerling and the South Celebes Affair, argues that Westerling's actions in South Celebes were the result of deliberate decisions taken by the military and political top brass in the Dutch East Indies. Through the General Commission, the representation of the Dutch government in the Dutch East Indies, the entire Cabinet was ultimately responsible for this. Even the top of the judiciary, in the person of Attorney General H.J. Felderhof, endorsed that military action was necessary and warranted by emergency law. Geersing therefore concludes that Westerling's action was in line with the political and social morals of the time and the legal and military frameworks in place at the time.
Westerling's actions temporarily restored Dutch control in Southern Celebes. Until the end of 1949 the situation there was relatively quiet and under control. However, the Netherlands East Indies government and the Dutch army command soon realised that Westerling's actions led to growing public criticism. There was an official inquiry by the Dutch government in April 1947 and Raymond Westerling's actions were justified by this committee. In 1948 he decided to leave the army. He was relieved of his duties in November 1948.
Former United States Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense General George C. Marshall once called Westerling "Satan" and "Devil" due to the atrocities committed under his command during the Indonesian National Revolution, especially during the Sulawesi campaign, which caused Marshall to cut all Marshall Plan aid to the Netherlands and push for the United States to recognize Indonesian sovereignty and for the Netherlands to withdraw.
The aftermath of the South Celebes affair has left deep marks, both in Indonesia and the Netherlands. On 12 September 2013, the Dutch government, through its ambassador in Jakarta, Tjeerd de Zwaan, apologised to all victims of the massacre. Ten widows who were still alive received compensation.