Latest news with #DutchColony
France 24
2 days ago
- General
- France 24
Dutch child survivor of Japan's WWII camps breaks silence
"Now I can talk about it without crying," said the Dutch woman who was four when she and her family were captured and held in "horrible" conditions in a camp on the Indonesian island of Java. Her three-year nightmare began early in 1942, a few months after the Japanese attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. "There was a lot of bombing and the Japanese arrived. We had dug a big hole in the garden to shelter my parents, my brother and my two sisters, as well as the family of our servants," the 87-year-old psychologist recalled, speaking publicly for the first time about the ordeal. Indonesia was a Dutch colony at the time, and Imperial Japan was keen to get its hands on its oil fields and rubber plantations. The Japanese separated her father, Willem Frederik Einthoven, from the rest of the family, and they did not hear from him for a year. The son of Nobel Prize winner Willem Einthoven, the inventor of the electrocardiogram, he was an engineer who headed Radio Malabar, the communications link with the Netherlands, but he refused to collaborate with his captors. One in 10 perished His wife and children were sent to a camp in Tjibunut, near Bandung, where they were held with thousands of other Dutch, British and Australian civilians. The vast majority of the 130,000 Allied civilians held by the Japanese during the war were Dutch, with more than one in 10 dying in the camps. The fact that there were more than twice as many Dutch civilians as military prisoners of war has meant that their ordeal is more "vivid in Dutch collective memory", said historian Daniel Milne of the University of Kyoto. "We often had nothing more than a bit of rice to eat," said Einthoven. "Since I was the smallest, I would slip under the fence to find food outside the camp, but I could only get weeds," Einthoven added. Parents were punished if a child was caught. "We risked the death penalty." "We suffered from hunger, lack of water, the heat, a total lack of hygiene and hours spent under the sun being counted and recounted." One of Einthoven's friends named Marianne, to whom she had given a doll, died of diphtheria. "I wondered if that doll would also cross to the other side; it was my first questioning of death," she said. Convoys bombed Then, in January 1944, the family was reunited and deported to Japan, where the Japanese military wanted her father and his team to invent a radar system. During the journey, their convoy was bombed by the Americans, but their ship was spared. Many were not so lucky, with thousands of Dutch POWs perishing on the voyage, their ships sunk or torpedoed. The 60 or so camps that held "some 1,200 civilians in Japan" are little known, said Mayumi Komiya of the POW Research Network Japan. Some of the prisoners did not survive, including Tineke's father, who died of pneumonia at 51, weakened by the lack of food and the long march to the laboratory that had been set up for him. The family was then sent to a temple 300 kilometres (185 miles) west of Tokyo, where they survived in isolation. They heard about Emperor Hirohito announcing Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945 from "some Italians, who were also prisoners not far away. One of them threw himself into my mother's arms, and she was very embarrassed," Einthoven recalled. She still remembers licking soup off rocks with other children from cans that had shattered during a failed American parachute drop to them. Repatriated via Australia to the Netherlands, Tineke worked after the war as a psychologist in Geneva, Nice in France, and neighbouring Monaco, and had two children. But she never shared her experiences of those years with anyone beyond her family. "I am speaking out today to show that even if one has lived through something horrible, one doesn't have to suffer your entire life. You can move on if you choose to free yourself from the victim status," she said with a smile.
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jennifer Geerlings-Simons becomes Suriname's first woman president
Lawmakers elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as Suriname's first woman president on Sunday, after her party won the most seats in legislative elections in May. The 71-year-old former opposition leader was left the sole candidate for president after her rivals decided on Thursday not to nominate anyone to lead the small country on South America's northern coast. Geerlings-Simons' National Democratic Party (NDP) won 18 of the 51 seats in congress, more than those of the centrist VHP party of outgoing president Chan Santokhi. The NDP had already entered into an agreement with five other parties with which it jointly holds 34 seats in parliament. The NDP was founded by former coup leader and autocrat-turned-elected-president Desi Bouterse, who died in hiding in December 2024. Santokhi's party had also hoped to form a coalition to remain in power, but said in a statement that it had decided not to oppose Geerlings-Simons' election. Suriname, a diverse country made up of descendants of people from India, Indonesia, China, the Netherlands, Indigenous groups and African slaves, marks its 50th anniversary of independence from the Dutch throne this November. In recent years, it has looked increasingly toward China as a political ally and trading partner and, in 2019, became one of the first Latin American countries to join the Asian giant's Belt and Road infrastructure drive. The former Dutch colony of 600,000 inhabitants, one of the poorest countries in South America, is hoping that an oil boom will bring prosperity. bur-st/dw
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Jennifer Geerlings-Simons becomes Suriname's first woman president
Lawmakers elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as Suriname's first woman president on Sunday, after her party won the most seats in legislative elections in May. The 71-year-old former opposition leader was left the sole candidate for president after her rivals decided on Thursday not to nominate anyone to lead the small country on South America's northern coast. Geerlings-Simons' National Democratic Party (NDP) won 18 of the 51 seats in congress, more than those of the centrist VHP party of outgoing president Chan Santokhi. The NDP had already entered into an agreement with five other parties with which it jointly holds 34 seats in parliament. The NDP was founded by former coup leader and autocrat-turned-elected-president Desi Bouterse, who died in hiding in December 2024. Santokhi's party had also hoped to form a coalition to remain in power, but said in a statement that it had decided not to oppose Geerlings-Simons' election. Suriname, a diverse country made up of descendants of people from India, Indonesia, China, the Netherlands, Indigenous groups and African slaves, marks its 50th anniversary of independence from the Dutch throne this November. In recent years, it has looked increasingly toward China as a political ally and trading partner and, in 2019, became one of the first Latin American countries to join the Asian giant's Belt and Road infrastructure drive. The former Dutch colony of 600,000 inhabitants, one of the poorest countries in South America, is hoping that an oil boom will bring prosperity. bur-st/dw
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Suriname expected to elect first female president amid discovery of oil reserves
Suriname is expected to elect its first female president this Sunday, the congresswoman and physician Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, who will run unopposed after the ruling party decided not to field a candidate. Geerlings-Simons will succeed current president Chandrikapersad Santokhi, 66, who has been in office since 2020 and was eligible for re-election – but whose party failed to secure the two-thirds parliamentary majority required in the country's indirect voting system. She will take office at a moment of profound contradiction for the former Dutch colony. Independent since 1975, it is still one of the poorest countries in the region, yet Suriname has recently discovered significant offshore oil reserves that could generate billions of dollars in revenue over the coming decades. The country is not expected to begin production until 2028. Geerlings-Simons began her rise to power on 25 May, when voters elected the 51 members of Suriname's National Assembly, though the results produced no clear winner. Her National Democratic party secured a narrow lead with 18 seats, just ahead of Santokhi's party, which won 17. In the days that followed, she managed to form a coalition with five other parties, giving her the minimum 34 seats required to be appointed president. Last Thursday, which was the deadline for registering presidential candidates, Santokhi's Progressive Reform party announced it would not be putting forward a nominee. Geerlings-Simons's party was founded by Dési Bouterse, who ruled as a dictator from 1980 to 1987, a period during which his regime was accused of executing 15 political opponents in 1982. Following Suriname's return to democracy, Bouterse was elected president in 2010 and re-elected in 2015, before handing over to Santokhi. The current president told local media there would be a 'smooth transition' of power. Corruption scandals marked his five-year term, and he was forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund to stabilise the economy. While his austerity measures helped restructure Suriname's public debt, they also triggered violent protests in the country of 600,000 people. During his presidency, oil reserves were discovered 90 miles (150km) off Suriname's coast. The project to extract them is led by the French multinational TotalEnergies, which announced in October that it would invest $10.5bn to develop the oilfield. Santokhi went so far as to propose a 'royalties for everyone' scheme, under which every Surinamese citizen would receive US$750 in a savings account, with an annual interest rate of 7%. The plan was one of his key re-election pledges – but it wasn't enough to secure his party a majority. With more than 90% of its territory covered by tropical rainforest, Suriname has come under increasing pressure over illegal gold mining and logging, practices that Geerlings-Simons publicly condemned during her time as chair of the National Assembly, where she played a role in advancing environmental regulations.
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Suriname expected to elect first female president amid discovery of oil reserves
Suriname is expected to elect its first female president this Sunday, the congresswoman and physician Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, 71, who will run unopposed after the ruling party decided not to field a candidate. Geerlings-Simons will succeed current president Chandrikapersad Santokhi, 66, who has been in office since 2020 and was eligible for re-election – but whose party failed to secure the two-thirds parliamentary majority required in the country's indirect voting system. She will take office at a moment of profound contradiction for the former Dutch colony. Independent since 1975, it is still one of the poorest countries in the region, yet Suriname has recently discovered significant offshore oil reserves that could generate billions of dollars in revenue over the coming decades. The country is not expected to begin production until 2028. Geerlings-Simons began her rise to power on 25 May, when voters elected the 51 members of Suriname's National Assembly, though the results produced no clear winner. Her National Democratic party secured a narrow lead with 18 seats, just ahead of Santokhi's party, which won 17. In the days that followed, she managed to form a coalition with five other parties, giving her the minimum 34 seats required to be appointed president. Last Thursday, which was the deadline for registering presidential candidates, Santokhi's Progressive Reform party announced it would not be putting forward a nominee. Geerlings-Simons's party was founded by Dési Bouterse, who ruled as a dictator from 1980 to 1987, a period during which his regime was accused of executing 15 political opponents in 1982. Following Suriname's return to democracy, Bouterse was elected president in 2010 and re-elected in 2015, before handing over to Santokhi. The current president told local media there would be a 'smooth transition' of power. Corruption scandals marked his five-year term, and he was forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund to stabilise the economy. While his austerity measures helped restructure Suriname's public debt, they also triggered violent protests in the country of 600,000 people. During his presidency, oil reserves were discovered 90 miles (150km) off Suriname's coast. The project to extract them is led by the French multinational TotalEnergies, which announced in October that it would invest $10.5bn to develop the oilfield. Santokhi went so far as to propose a 'royalties for everyone' scheme, under which every Surinamese citizen would receive US$750 in a savings account, with an annual interest rate of 7%. The plan was one of his key re-election pledges – but it wasn't enough to secure his party a majority. With more than 90% of its territory covered by tropical rainforest, Suriname has come under increasing pressure over illegal gold mining and logging, practices that Geerlings-Simons publicly condemned during her time as chair of the National Assembly, where she played a role in advancing environmental regulations.
