New Assen siege

Press, 14 March 1978, Page 1

New Assen siege

NZPA-Reuter Assen (Netherlands) At least three South Moluccan guerrillas brandishing sub-machine-guns stormed and occupied a Government building in Assen yesterday, the police have said. Officials feared that at least 20 people were being held hostage. Four were known to have been injured. The police said that the gunmen had fired from the windows at people in the street. They also said several people escaped across the roof from the building.

headquarters of the Netherlands Government’s Drenthe province. The police said this latest violence involving south Moluccan guerrillas began about 10 a.m. (about 9 pan. N.Z. time) when one gunman drove up in a taxi to the building, where people inside were settling down to Monday morning work behind their desks. Last May, South Moluccan gunmen took more than 150 hostages in attacks on a train and a village school near Assen. And in 1975 they invaded Indonesia’s consulate In Amsterdam.

These acts aimed to draw world attention to their demands for independence for their Pacific Island homeland, now part of Indonesia. When the Dutch colonial rulers granted Indonesia independence in 1949 about 4000 Moluccans came to the Netherlands. Ethnically different from other subjects of the nineteenth century Dutch colonial empire in the East Indies, Moluccans had served in the Dutch Army there. Dutch etfbrts to ensure them autonomy in nostcolonial Indonesia failed.