Word: moluccans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Senior Writer Ed Magnuson described the conspiracy theory that surrounds the assassination of Ray's victim, Martin Luther King Jr. Our Nation staff pieced together the Ray saga, as our World and International staffs began work on another late-breaking story, the Dutch marine attack on the South Moluccan kidnapers; their story on the raid includes an eye-witness account by TIME'S Peter Kronenberg...
...dawn broke, a thick mist rolled across the pastureland around the Dutch hamlet of De Punt, enveloping the motionless yellow train. Inside, nine jittery Moluccan hijackers and 51 exhausted hostages were beginning their 20th day of cold fear together, a grisly endurance record of its kind. At a primary school in the nearby village of Bovensmilde, four other Moluccan terrorists kept four schoolteachers prisoner. Deployed around both the train and the school was an estimated 2,000-man army of crack Dutch commando marines, a special squad of sharpshooters, and armored military-police units...
...hold out indefinitely despite the exhausting psychological toll on their unwilling prisoners, the Dutch government decided to end the hostages' agony. In the most dramatic rescue operation since Entebbe, a Dutch military team mounted a commando-style dawn assault on both train and school. Six of the 13 Moluccan terrorists and two of the hostages were killed. One terrorist, two marines and nine of the prisoners were wounded. It was a heavy toll, but at least the long ordeal had ended...
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...
...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...