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There was little rejoicing by the Dutch government. Looking somber and tired, Prime Minister Joop den Uyl appeared on television to explain that "violence proved necessary to put an end to the hostage seizure" because weeks of negotiations with the hijackers had reached an impasse. Justice Minister Andreas van Agt, who with the prime Minister headed the crisis team dealing with the terrorists, made his own appeal for understanding of the difficult decision. "I beseech you to believe there was no other way," he said at a press conference. "We tried everything—every path of dialogue that there might be, we took it, but we found them all closed."
Indeed, the 13 Moluccan terrorists —all members of leftist-radical youth organizations—never wavered from their key blackmail demands. They wanted the release of 21 other young Moluccans now in Dutch prisons for previous acts of terrorism, safe conduct and a 747 jet to carry them to an undisclosed destination outside The Netherlands. In addition, they insisted that the Dutch government cut all links with the Indonesian government.
"From the beginning," Prime Minister Den Uyl explained, "we made it clear there was no question of the hostages being transported somewhere else. And the demand for safe conduct, if granted, is an invitation to renewed blackmail actions." As for the political demands, Den Uyl said, "we have seen from earlier experience in the relationship between the Dutch society and the Moluccan community that the awakening of illusions, the making of concessions, punishes itself, leading to bitterness and disappointment."
Reprisal Fear. Still, the impossible Moluccan illusion is unlikely to fade, even in defeat. The terrorists are children or grandchildren of 4,000 Moluccan soldiers and their dependents who left their Indonesian archipelago in 1951 out of fear of reprisals for supporting the Dutch against the Indonesian independence movement. The Moluccan exiles in The Netherlands (they now number 40,000) cling fanatically to the dream of a future free "Republic of the South Moluccas" in the Indonesian archipelago. Angered by the refusal of the Hague government to support their cause, seven of the young Moluccans now in prison hijacked a train for 13 days in December 1975, killing three people. At the same time, another terrorist squad occupied the Indonesian consulate in Amsterdam for 15 days.
In a grim replay of that incident, nine young Moluccans hijacked a Utrecht-Groningen express train near De Punt on May 23, while five others seized the primary school at Bovensmilde, where there were 105 children and five teachers. There was no doubt that the Moluccans intended to terrify the country. The children were forced to the windows to chant to the waiting troops and parents, "Van Agt, we want to live!" On several occasions hostages were displayed outside the train with ropes around their necks. But after an influenza-type epidemic broke out at the school, the terrorists freed all the children as well as one ailing teacher.