Andi Monji saw it all happen. The war had already been going on for months but after the murder of a Dutch commandant a storm raged through the village. Now there are three mass graves, which remind us of the slaughter of 206 men from Suppa and the surrounding area. ‘When Westerling came,’ Andi Monji says, ‘the killing went on day and night. The children got bits of bread from the Dutch, as a sort of consolation.’
‘Our village had given shelter to Bau Masseppe, one of the heroes of the strugglefor independence. We were punished for this. Westerling shot people out of the top of a coconut tree if he had to. One man survived, he managed to hide in the water.’
Tears spring to one old lady’s eyes as she remembers how the white soldiers sent her father away. But her father didn’t speak Malay, only Buginese. He didn’t understand the orders. She was being carried by him, when he got a bullet between the eyes. And she got a bit of bread. Yet the old men and women of Suppa are not anti-Dutch. ‘Not all Dutch people are bad,’ says Andi Monji. ‘Even during the war, when you came into contact with them, they proved to be really nice boys. But it’s past, it’s history. If people want to dress up in colonial costumes, then you’re simply showing that yes, we were once colonized.’
Near Soppeng, Sulawesi