A Dutch court has ordered the government to compensate the widows of seven villagers who were summarily executed and a man shot and wounded in a notorious massacre during Indonesia's bloody battle for independence from colonial rule. The Hague Civil Court ruled on Wednesday it was "unreasonable" for the government to argue that the widows were not entitled to compensation because the statute of limitations had expired.
According to Indonesian researchers, Dutch troops wiped out almost the entire male population of Rawagede, a village in West Java, two years before the former colony declared independence in 1949.
"Justice has been done," said Liesbeth Zegveld, lawyer for the plaintiffs. "This means that the state can't just sit in silence for 60 years waiting for the case to go away of the plaintiffs to die and then appeal to the statute of limitations."