11 June 1977 – De Punt
11 June 1977. De Punt. Just before five in the morning. 60 people are on board the train: 9 Moluccan activists and 51 passengers. The silence of the early Saturday morning is suddenly and brutally shattered. 6 Starfighters of the Royal Netherlands Air Force roar past just above the train. A barrage of bullets. The Special Assistance Unit (BBE) opens fire. Marines storm the train. After 19 days the Dutch government decides to intervene and bring the train hijacking to a violent end. It had begun earlier, on 23 May, when 9 Moluccan activists hijacked the intercity train from Assen to Groningen near the village of De Punt. When the hijacking is brought to an end, 8 people lose their lives, 6 of them Moluccan activists.
Today Museum Maluku commemorates the events of 11 June 1977 by showing a number of objects from its own museum collection and two objects currently on display at fellow museums.
Coffee pot
The Museum Maluku collection includes a round orange hard-plastic coffee pot with a white screw cap. The pot, 30cm high and 16cm in diameter, has three bullet holes. Two to the left of a large label and one at the back on the right. The label reads in large block capitals: Treinstel 747 – 11 juni 1977 ,,De Punt” and beneath it the name T.S. J.C.J. Hoogenboom. At the bottom of the label is printed Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et du Tourisme. This bullet-riddled coffee pot was recovered from the train and donated to the museum. How it ended up on the train, however, remains unclear. J.C.H. Hoogenboom was in all likelihood the owner of the pot. Did he work for the Dutch Railways? Was he the driver, or the conductor who was released earlier and had to leave the coffee pot behind?
Bullet holes in a window frame
Since 2000 the museum has held a bullet and a piece of the metal profile of the window frame of carriage 747. Two bullet holes are clearly visible in the profile, caused by the same calibre of bullet as the one the museum also holds. Both objects were donated by a private individual.
Destination board
The exhibition Menyala, the extraordinary history of the Moluccans in Drenthe, on view at the Drents Museum in Assen until 1 October, also shows an object riddled with bullet holes as a silent witness to the shooting and storming of the train at De Punt. It is a so-called destination board from the Assen–Groningen intercity, mounted at the front of the train. Destination boards used to indicate where the train ran from and to. The board is made of metal, painted blue with Groningen printed on it in yellow. It is on loan from the Marine Corps Museum in Rotterdam.
RMS flag
The Marine Corps Museum in Rotterdam also holds the RMS flag that flew at the front of the train. The flag is made of towels sewn together in blue, white, green and red. Like the destination board, the flag and its pole were taken by the marines after the train was stormed and reached the Marine Corps Museum in Rotterdam via the Ministry of Defence. It has been on display there for several years now, telling the story of the storming of the train from the marines' perspective. What is new and remarkable is that the Marine Corps Museum has renewed the presentation of the flag and now also shows and voices the Moluccan perspective. Museum Maluku advised on this.
The Ministry of Defence claims ownership of the RMS flag taken as spoils by the marines. From the Moluccan side the flag is being reclaimed. A tug-of-war over ownership, with the prospect of possibly lengthy legal proceedings, is painful and frustrating for all parties. Museum Maluku has therefore proposed regarding the RMS flag as a museum object and turning the contested question of ownership into joint stewardship by both the Marine Corps Museum and Museum Maluku. Although the management of the Marine Corps Museum views this favourably, our proposal remains too sensitive at administrative and ministerial level.
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Ons Land
Finally, the semi-permanent exhibition ONS LAND – decolonisation, generations, stories, created by Museum Maluku together with the Indisch Herinneringscentrum, also features images and sounds of the train at De Punt. The sound of the Starfighters, footage of the train flying the RMS flag and a portrait of Junus Ririmasse, one of the activists at De Punt, who died on 9 September 2021.
Head Curator Huib Akihary
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